YTB: One Person's Extended Perspective
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This is what I love about the internet. Kevin Horrigan writes about the YTB scandal, from a historical perspective. I am going to republish a great deal of his story, probably overdoing fair use.
"There I was, reading Tim Logan's excellent story in Sunday's Post-Dispatch about YTB Internationalwhen a name from the past jumped out at me: J. Lloyd Tomer.
Why, just a couple of weeks ago, I'd been regaling my colleagues with a story from my days as a young general assignment reporter, and the time I found this small-town preacher who'd bought Elvis Presley's airplane. And suddenly, there he was, on the front page of my newspaper. To quote Logan's story:
YTB was launched in 2001 by three Alton-area veterans of the multilevel marketing industry: J. Lloyd "Coach" Tomer, a former pastor from Benton, Ill., who became a high-level salesman for insurance company A.L. Williams; his son Scott, who's now YTB's chief executive; and longtime business partner."
YTB's defenders say it's more like like Amway and Mary Kay Cosmetics, multi-level marketing plans that deliver useful products, in YTB's case, exotic travel and vacations.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has launched her own investigation, and two class action lawsuits have been filed in East St. Louis against YTB on behalf of disgruntled members.
But here's the thing: If it is a pyramid scheme, it's not the first one J. Lloyd Tomer has been involved with. Nor, for matter, is it the most unusual one.
When I met him, back in May, 1978, "Coach" Tomer was "Pastor" Tomer of the First Church of God in Benton. I drove over to visit him after reading that his church had bought a half-interest in Elvis Presley's airplane, the Lisa Marie. Elvis had died the previous August, and the good pastor, then 44, was convinced that folks would pay $300 apiece to tour The King's refurbished Convair 880.
Visitors would also get to hear the plane's crew share stories about flying Elvis and his posse around the country, including the time he woke everyone up at 2 a.m. to fly to Denver where he could get his favorite fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
And as if the tour and tales of The King weren't enough, Tomer told me, each and every visitor would get 12 $30 kits containing a gasoline additive called "Add-a-Tune" and a chance to sign up as a distributor for the product. Tomer's partner, a Dallas businessman named Robert Philpott, claimed that treating your car's engine with Add-a-Tune would boost its mileage by 2 to 6 miles a gallon.
"At times," Tomer told me, "God says to me, 'Go get 'em, Tiger,' and I go get 'em."
He figured the promotion would easily pay off the church's$800,000 building debt within a year. Plus, church members would get on the ground floor as Add-a-Tune distributors, selling more distributorships and becoming wealthy. I told him it was the most elaborate church fundraising scheme I'd ever heard of. "We could have had a chili supper, I suppose," Tomer said.
Alas, the 50-state tour that Philpott and Tomer planned for the Lisa Marie never got off the ground. By June of 1978 the Texas attorney general had quashed the marketing plan as being in violation of the state's deceptive trade practices law. Philpott was discovered to have had problems with the IRS and the SEC. By July the Lisa Marie had been repossessed (it's now parked near Graceland in Memphis).
And a lot of people were stuck with dozens of cases of a useless oil additive."
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