Multi family education program: a scam/MLM?

[April C.]

I attended a weekend training program offered by a multi family investment club and found that at least 2/3 of their training was about selling their courses and advertising for their sponsors/partner companies. The founder talked about successful student cases and encouraged people to join their program as students for a few thousand bucks and more... their lower level students get to invest in the deals offered by the higher level of students...and most of the syndications done by higher level students raised funds from lower level students..

It really sounds like a multi level marketing for me.

I have several concerns about such education programs:

1) are their teaching materials really worth the money? I mean, real estate investment is not a secret..anyone can learn it by reading books and practicing in real life (sure people need capital but we need capital anyways with or without attending such education programs)...

more importantly,

2) do they just do internal turnovers of the capital and properties? What I mean is that, first, the syndicators raise money from other members; then, in a few years, syndicators only sell to other syndicators in the same group although they claim to sell on the market (they do but their "classmates" buy such properties from them "in the market"....therefore most of the capital and properties only turn around within their system...

Please tell me if I am overreacting...