The race for the NC Senate seat in District 42 is becoming particularly heated in the closing days of the campaigns as Democrats attempt to break the Republican supermajority in the state legislature. The race is one of just over a dozen that the Washington, DC-based Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee have put money into in an effort to target legislative races across the country.
In District 42, Democrat Woodson Bradley is facing Republican Stacie McGinn for the seat currently held by Sen. Rachel Hunt, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. Democrats have labeled McGinn a MAGA “extremist” and criticized her support for groups like Moms for Liberty and her opposition to DEI policies. However, McGinn is pointing to Bradley’s role as a high-level sales manager in an alleged pyramid scheme that was shut down by the Federal Trade Commission in 2013.
Bradley is a self-described former real estate agent and a platinum-level sales manager with Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing Inc. (FHTM). In 2013, a federal court granted a request by the Federal Trade Commission, joined by the attorney generals of Illinois, Kentucky, and North Carolina, for a “Temporary Restraining Order and Asset Freeze” against the FHTM, an allegedly illegal pyramid scheme.
The FTC and the attorney generals of the respective states sought to stop FTHM’s allegedly unlawful practices. Gov. Roy Cooper was attorney general of North Carolina at the time.
“Operations like this claim to offer career success and high earnings, but the reality is that only the few at the top make money, and they make it at the expense of new recruits who end up losing,” said Cooper said in a 2013 article announcing the closure. He is not listed on Woodson Bradley’s campaign site as an endorsement.
According to a 2013 FTC press release on the case, FTHM “… claimed consumers would make substantial income by joining the scheme… In some areas, including Chicago, the scheme targeted Spanish-speaking consumers.”
According to the complaint, the FHTM violates the “North Carolina Pyramid and Chain Schemes Statute” under the General Statutes as well as General Statute 75-1.1.
Bradley is mentioned by her married name in the footnotes of the FTC complaint.
FHTM was a Kentucky-based company that enrolled more than 350,000 consumers throughout the US, Puerto Rico, and Canada over four years. As part of a 2016 settlement with the FTC in Kentucky, Illinois, and North Carolina, FHTM mailed more than $3.7 million in 285,361 checks back to those who lost money under the operators of the multi-level marketing scheme.
“After conducting its own investigation, the court-appointed receiver determined that FHTM’s main business was recruiting new members and not selling products and services as it claimed, and confirmed the allegations made by the FTC and the states,” according to a press release. “The overwhelming majority of participants – more than 98 percent – lost more money than they ever made. At least 88 percent of consumers did not even recoup their enrollment fees. To the extent that consumers could make any income, it was mainly for recruiting other consumers into FHTM’s scheme. More than 81 percent of the payments to participants were based on recruiting new members and not for the sale of products or services. Not surprisingly, at least 94 percent of consumers did not renew their membership after their initial year.”
Woodson Bradley (then Woodson Gardner) has her former affiliation with FHTM listed in her X bio (then Twitter bio), which is still active but has been dormant since 2013.
Additionally, there are still live YouTube videos from FTHM in which Bradley is a spokesperson, one of which identifies her as a “platinum sales manager” for FHTM.
“I ask you, as businessmen and businesswomen – not as Democrats or Republicans or Unaffiliated voters – if you were hiring one of us based on our relevant, skill-building experience, who would you choose?” said McGinn in a press release. “For over 35 years, I’ve been solving critical problems for major clients around the world by bringing practical solutions. Together, let’s make Charlotte, North Carolina the best place in the country to live.”
Bradley’s campaign did not respond to the Carolina Journal’s request for comment.
