Oh, there are a lot of these kinds of schemes pitched to young and old alike. Wanna dip just one toe into the Twilight Zone? Try attending a Mary Kay induction seminar. I ran into a kid just this past weekend who had been through some adjudicated adult rehab in Escambia County, Florida. He described a murder by guards by way of intentionally giving the kid a drug to which he was severely allergic. They did this to make the kid shut up cause he was moaning loudly all night as he was locked in solitude while he withdrew cold turkey from heroin. Same kid also tried to sell me on magazine crew. I'd run into that before. There are also perfume crews, Amway is still kickin, bunch of others.
The good news is that we've had 30 years--a generation and a half now--to become familiar with this stuff and I think people are starting to recognize it for what it is more easily. It's become part of the common experience and consensus trance so we're now better able, as a society, to mount a defense.
