Has anyone here been in and out of an MLM before? Are the stories true?

I almost joined a particular MLM scheme (not gonna mention company name) back when MLM was new to me. The company did not change its name frequently, and they call themselves entrepreneurs as they are officially called IBOs (Independent Business Owners).

In most cases, how MLM works is as follows:

1. You'll be invited by someone to a motivational seminar.
2. During the seminar, if you decided to join the scheme by paying a joining fee, you'll be recruited under someone's downline in a LOS (line of sponsorship).
3. After you're recruited, there is a compulsory minimum monthly purchases you need to make to keep yourselves in the rewards systems and accumulate some points. The points will "expire" if you do not do so, so you need to purchase more to keep the points alive. The prices of the purchases are usually marked-up at least 2 to 10 times so that the profit margin will be used to distribute incentives to the LOS.
4. Your upline will encourage you to recruit as many people as you can, as your downline by having them do steps 1) to current step.
5. The LOS is structured such that, the higher you are in the LOS, the more overriding incentives you will get over time.
6. Very few are at the top of the LOS such that the passive income in the form of incentives is sustainable to afford a luxurious lifestyle. By Math, if you managed to have 5 downlines, and each of your downlines has 5 downlines recursively from level 2 to level 7, the total strength is already about 1% of Singapore's population. Not many are able to recruit and build that number of people in their LOS.

Regarding the flaunting of expensive cars, you will never know if the car is:

• owned or rented,
• paid in full or with mortgage.

One can easily staged this by renting an expensive car and engaging a professional photographer, to create a FOMO effect while spending less.

I was actually approached by a Grab driver about a year ago. As my pickup location was in my school, the driver started the conversation by asking about my plans in the future. Honestly, I didn't really want to talk as I was really tired with my projects in school, but it would be rude of me if I did not answer.
I answered his question and he told me that he used to be working in a similiar industry that I am interested in, and said the working life was really tough and dirty etc. I simply nod my head and answered "Oh..", "I see.."
Then he asked me if I have heard of this MLM company, and I said yes because the office is actually near to where I live. So he started telling me about he knew this poly girl who worked really hard while she was studying and owns a VW Beetle at the age of 20. And she is just one of the example in the company. Again, I simply nod my head and gave a forceful smile to him...
When we reach our destination, he continues with his talk and pointed to the energy drink that was on his car dashboard. (Yes, he stick the energy drink using a blu-tack) He even told me that this energy drink will take on the big brands in the supermarket in 2 years time... I simply smiled and said "Ohh really?". He wrote down his name and gave me his contact number and told me to contact him when I'm interested in joining the company. I threw the paper away as soon as I was at my lift lobby...

Honestly, I don't mind if drivers share their experiences they had in their life. But to me, taking advantage of being a cab driver and attract young adults who are still studying really kind of disgust me.