Looking back on my childhood, there wasn't a single door-to-door scam that my mother didn't fall for (including allowing herself to be converted by JWs who knocked on her door). She was a poorly-educated immigrant woman trying to raise a family in a strange country.
Frying pans, tupperware, vacuum cleaners, cassette tapes and study programs to teach her to speak English, encyclopedias...all of it. And we barely made enough money to keep ourselves above the poverty line. We couldn't afford any of this, but, you know, payment plans.
My brother got sucked into Amway. He paid the up front fee to receive his starter package but moved away from it quickly when he saw too many religious parallels with the Amway folks and convinced himself they were under the influence of demons.
Homeopathy was popular, too. I'm convinced one local woman had munchausen by proxy. She'd go to quack herbalists who would diagnose various sicknesses in her children. They would take various sugar-looking pills throughout the day. Those kids were terrified of the world because their mother saw monsters around every corner.
The local congregations were hotbeds for this kind of stuff. They are communities of gullible people with underdeveloped critical thinking skills. For scammers it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
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