By Dan Huff
TUCSONAN JOY YOUNG wishes she'd never heard of pompous Christian media mogul the Rev. Pat Robertson.
The self-righteous Robertston controls the conservative Christian Broadcasting Network. Until recently he was also the highly publicized owner and chief pitchman for a multilevel or "network" marketing business called KaloVita. Billing itself as "The Good Life Company," it sold vitamins, face cream and, it turns out, pure snake oil, by recruiting distributors who were then required to recruit others to sell products.
"It was the first multilevel marketing company that was owned by a prominent figure," Young says. "I figured the Rev. Robertson was honest and had integrity, and the company had to be pretty good if he was putting his name on it."
Boy, was she wrong.
Because of her belief in Robertson and KaloVita, Young, 43, has lost everything--roughly $20,000.
The money went for an 800 number, fax machine, printing and mail campaigns--things her "sponsor" in the business, Vance Alford of Raleigh, N.C., encouraged her to use to conduct business. Young says she maxed out her credit cards in an effort to make the business go.
While Young was working so hard, according to an October 3 report in Newsweek, Robertson was touting multilevel marketing as "one of the greatest expressions of the Biblical principles of prosperity that I know of."
Young says many of the customers she did get joined simply because Robertson talked about KaloVita on his TV show, The 700 Club.
She recalls, "I had little old farmers in Iowa who believed in him so much, who didn't know anything about the business, they were sending me money anyway. I told them they didn't want to join before I taught them what it was about, but they'd just send their money in anyway."
But despite Robertson's nauseating sermons on behalf of mammon, things didn't work. The products were woefully overpriced--$49 for a bottle of vitamins--or just plain dumb, as in the company's Sea of Galilee Skin and Body Treatment System.
A bitterly disappointed Young says, "I kept believing for too long this was going to work. I spent everything I had in savings. My mom, who's about 80, put in $2,000, too."
Late last year Robertson bailed out of the business following an exposé by Newsweek and ABC News, which reported he was using money from his non-profit ministry to fuel his for-profit business ventures. At that point Young realized she was in deep trouble.
She was forced to sell off her possessions, has applied for food stamps and was recently evicted from her apartment because she couldn't afford to pay the rent. Young also suffered a bout of suicidal depression, but was unable to afford medication until a local agency stepped in to help her.
Since then Young has written three letters to the multi-millionaire Robertson, whose children also are millionaires, asking for help; or, failing that, simply the money's she's owed for unsold product she returned.
Robertson has demonstrated a decided lack of Christian charity, however, by failing to respond.
"It's horrible," says Young. "I have nothing now."
In the meantime, Newsweek estimates Robertson's tax-exempt TV network is worth $230 million and an entertainment conglomerate he controls, IFE, is worth $150 million.
God could not be reached for comment.
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