A former co-worker once explained that one trait of any cult is to alienate the subject from their family, leaving a void in which the cult becomes the new family. This was in the context of our mutually complaining about another company to which we were contracted – it seemed that every last person there was insufferably arrogant; it turned out that the first thing that company did upon hiring was send the new employees to an orientation session, where they lived dormitory-style at or near headquarters (in other words, separating them from their families). He had previously been a social worker, and was a psychology major, so I figured he knew of what he spoke – on the other hand, shortly after this happened he tried to hook me into some MLM scheme.
EDIT
It’s not. We heard about an MLM scheme in Ethiopia, I’d say 8 or 10 years ago. We told the person to save their money (or rather, our money, since they called us about needing to come up with the initial “investment”). Later they told us that the people at the center of it had been arrested.
