Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul is literally one of the oldest fraud tricks in the book, and it’s alarming that people still fall prey to schemes such as this especially in the wake of one such dubious schemes that has invested participants looming on the precipice of disaster.
These schemes are no new trend in the Nigerian environment but it’s still alarming how people fall for them, it would have been funny if it wasn’t a matter of such serious concern, space a couple of years between these things and the story remains the same, people rush, invest their money and inevitably a sizeable number of them got swindled.
The term ‘ponzi’ can be traced back to US Italian immigrant, Carlo Charles Ponzi who pulled off one of the biggest investment scams in history that had people losing as much as millions of dollars, and this was as far back as the 1920’s.
Following the pattern laid back by the progenitor of such scams, Ponzi/pyramid schemes promise an unusually high returns on investment in a really short period of time, promises such as this are calculated to draw in as much people as possible. Ponzi schemes are called such because despite initial returns on investment as the case may seem, they are untenable and somewhere along the line, they are designed to crash and fail, their whole model operates by using initial investments from the first round of participants to pay new entrants into the scheme, as with every good scam there need to be testimonials to sweeten the deal and make it more glamorous & credible but the failure is inevitable and schemes such as this are designed to crash in a couple of months, weeks even.
I have had people tender the age-old argument of “life is a risk”, but for something that is untenable and designed to fail somewhere along the road, it’s not a course of action we’d advise you on anytime.
As a matter of fact, your red flags should start going off when an investment scheme ticks any of these boxes:
- Promises unusually high returns in a short period of time.
- Cannot tender a proper document explaining its business model.
- Is not licensed with the government to operate.
- Difficulty in cashing out.
- Promises unusually high returns in a short period of time.
- Cannot tender a proper document explaining its business model.
- Is not licensed with the government to operate.
- Difficulty in cashing out.
Why do keep falling for investment schemes such as this is another pertinent question, another age old case of human greed or just another example of the depths people are forced to descend into as a result of the economic circumstances surrounding us.
Whatever the reason, investing in shady schemes is never the answer, having to lose nights without sleeping, worrying over the fate of your investment does not in any way sound like the kind of life you deserve, a course of action we’d better advise you on is to save money to invest with credible investment companies where your returns are definitely guaranteed.
The returns on money invested might seem a bit paltry when compared with the returns fraudulent Ponzi schemes promise.
But which would you rather have, guaranteed returns on investment or fleeting schemes that promise heaven only to scam you of your hard earned money.
The ball is in your court, choose wisely!!!