I remember way back in the day my parents were invited to a “dinner party”. It wasn’t until they got their that they found out that it was a pitch to some MLM scheme like Mary Kay.

If your parents got to the "dinner party" and found that their friends hadn't actually invited them, but that the invitation was sent by the Mary Kay company without your parents' friends' knowledge, then I retract my claim. But I suspect it was your parents' friends being misleading on a small scale rather than a company lying on a large scale.

The entire idea behind MLzm schemes is to con your “friends” to get them to sell your goods.