Mafia style marketing (Norway)

Two norwegian bloggers have been threatened and harassed after being skeptical about the Xocai chocolate. The product promises a beneficial health effect, but the company marketing the product doesn't tolerate any criticism.

Blogger "Morten" wrote a couple of years ago a post on his blog where he said that the chocolate from Xocai promised more than it could give. He was critical of the alleged health benefits of the chocolate, and that the product was sold at the so-called network marketing model.

The post got some attention, generated debate and crept steadily upward on Google's search results. Finally, the blog post appeared among the top hits that came up when searching for Xocai.

Then came the reaction.
Seven-digit U.S. dollar lawsuit

In April this year, "Morten" received an e-mail in which the company claimed Sjokoservice Norway mediated reactions from its American parent company, MXI Corp..

"Morten" shall have been notified that a seven figure lawsuit in U.S. dollars was coming. Sjokoservice Norway pointed out in the email that they could see that many blog posts were written during working hours, and sent the e-mail to the blogger's employer and colleagues.

This was only the beginning of the harassment from the chocolate company:

Later, the blogger did receive a new e-mail in which Sjokoservice Norway explained that hundreds of their members were upset over "Morten's" article. Several members had expressed a desire to travel to his home to confront him with accusations.

On it's website the Sjokoservice Norway have added driving directions to the house, and a map view of Google Maps with an overview of the residence. In addition, they laid out a picture that showed his "family tree", that is, images and names of "Morten's" parents, siblings and wife, with everyone's careers, year of birth and place of residence given.

The first blogger "Morten" gave in for the harassments and threats he received from Sjokoservice Norway/MXI Corp., excuse the posts and removed them entirely. But later, another blogger, Gunnar Tjomlid got interested in the story and decided to publicise the e-mails that was exchanged between "Morten" and Sjokoservice Norway.
He also received a similiar treatment from Sjokoservice Norway/MXI Corp. but still refuses to give in for their harrassment ant threats.

The story is getting very ugly when the distribution company involves a persons employer and colleagues, makes public all persolalia for the blogger and his family members, including address and driving directions to his home and so forth...

In other words; MAFIA STYLE MARKETING


All quotes above is from the NRK article (linked below) and translated from Norwegian with Google Translate
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The story on NRK (the Norwegian goverment channel) - (Google Translate)

The whole story from the other of the two bloggers, Gunnar Tjomlid - (Google Translate)

More about this case on Gunnar Tjomlid's blog - (Google Translate)

The norwegian newspaper Fredrikstad Blad has also worked on the case - (Google Translate)

reply to post by Skallagrimsson

Now I got this sudden urge to also make a blog about this company.

From what I've seen in my five minutes of research on this company, it seems to be a fairly typical multi level marketing company. An MLM company is different from, say Tupperware, which is a direct sales company. In most MLM companies, the true purpose is to build your downline, this is the list of people you've suckered into selling the company's products. This is really the only way to make money in MLM because your downline needs to purchase and stock their own inventory for which you receive a commission. Most people who get involved in MLM end up wasting thousands of dollars and have boxes full of crap in ther garage.

I'm really not surprised to hear of an MLM company doing something like this. They depend on good publicity and the ignorance of those they pull in.

The ironic part of the story is that the blog likely rose to the top of Google because it had much better content and links to it than the majority of the MLM affiliate sites all over the web.

Chocolate Rain! O YA