Hitting back at pyramid schemes...

...a friend of mine made a good suggestion in the pub lately. What if everyone who knew of someone involved in the schemes were to pass that name on to Revenue? Would Revenue have an obligation to check whether the person filed CAT returns in respect of the money or 'gifts' received?

It could stamp out the scams anyway. On the other hand, call me old fashioned but there is something about squealing to Revenue that I just hate - it's a post-colonial thing involving a resistance to carrying out the dirty work for those in authority...

Would it work?

Eminem

I wouldnt do it because were is the money cuming from . You give money to the pyramid scheme And then you can get alot of money back are not .

Eminem

Eminem wrote:

You give money to the pyramid scheme And then you can get alot of money back are not .

Huh?

pbsuxok1znja4r

I never understood why pyramid schemes actually worked...Why would someone just "give" you several thousand euro, just so they could then go and get someone else to "give" them money also...? Can't they do that without being in the scheme?

Gator

Scumbags

Eminem

scouser.tommy wrote:

I never understood why pyramid schemes actually worked...Why would someone just "give" you several thousand euro, just so they could then go and get someone else to "give" them money also...? Can't they do that without being in the scheme?

Exactly thats what i think to there has to be some catch

Angels

Firstly anyone who gets involved in these has to be stupid! It's a quick way to make more out of your money but your not investing in anything ahh daww!!

These schemes were in Albania it collapsed & 1,500 people comittied suicide now someone tell me that these schemes work & you live happily ever after ya right.

Our Government should clamp down on the law that is there already & make it much more strict so that the Gards can take action on these people that set them up.

Gurgle

Eminem wrote:

Exactly thats what i think to there has to be some catch

Of course theres a catch, money doesn't come from thin air.

Assume its a 1 to 10 scheme, i.e. everbody in it brings in 10 more people.
1 -> 10 -> 100 -> 1,000 -> 10,000 -> 100,000 -> 1,000,000 -> 10,000,000
By the 5th iteration you're at double the population of the entire country.

But of course you have no idea which level you're joining at.
The only person who knows they won't lose is the person who starts it. There is nobody for them to give money to, so they don't have to buy in. Anyone actually making money out of it further down the line is purely incidental.

SoupyNorman

Never forget last year, I went to a "business opportunity" seiminar in college one evening. The poster seemed on the level but 10 seconds into the presentation I had it twigged. I kinda felt priviliged to be part a a pyramid scheme talk as you often hear of them or know somebody who was involved but never yourself directly. There was 5 guys all in cheap oul shirts and black jeans, a laptop and enough grease in thier hair to fry chips in. The cheek of these fellas scamming students, not 20euro between us in the room i'd say. What got me the most was they didnt try to disguise it whatsoever....ie they drew diagrams in pyrimid shapes, showed a tacky american promotional video of unbelievable success stories and of course told us how thier lives had change so much for the better (even though one of them drove a 96 ford fiesta). I stayed out of politeness until they asked who would be interested, to which came a 'nobody wanted to say anything but all wanted to leave' situation' so I lead the charge and made a bee-line for the door and one of the scammers cut my passege off, stood in front of me and said "is this an opportunity for you" to which I surprisingly replied "NO", pushed past him and left.

I wish there was something I could do to hang the ba$tards out to dry, now they had'nt much hope of catching out students with no money but there are gulible ppl out there who they will snare.

Eminem

Gurgle wrote:

Of course theres a catch, money doesn't come from thin air.

Assume its a 1 to 10 scheme, i.e. everbody in it brings in 10 more people.
1 -> 10 -> 100 -> 1,000 -> 10,000 -> 100,000 -> 1,000,000 -> 10,000,000
By the 5th iteration you're at double the population of the entire country.

But of course you have no idea which level you're joining at.
The only person who knows they won't lose is the person who starts it. There is nobody for them to give money to, so they don't have to buy in. Anyone actually making money out of it further down the line is purely incidental.

Your right there but what im saying is that i wouldnt do it because i dont know where the money is coming , And its kind of odd that you give ive in money and you can get more back. I wouldnt trust it atall

Gurgle

Eminem wrote:

i dont know where the money is coming

Its coming from the people you con into 'joining'. Your game is to convince them that they can find another 10 people each that they too can con money out of.

Eminem wrote:

And its kind of odd that you give ive in money and you can get more back.

Not odd at all really, just that 15% of people end up with money belonging to the other 85%. Those 85% never get any money back.

Simplified:
Put an ad in the paper saying "Send me €10 and I'll send you details on how to make €1,000,000".
For every person that sends you €10, send them these instructions:
'Put an ad in the paper saying "Send me €10 and I'll send you details on how to make €10,000"'.
It will work until everyone inclined to make blind investments has learned what to expect from this one.
How many people would you expect to send another €10 when they see the add the second time?

FX Meister

You take the risk if you join the scheme. If you don't know how it works and you blindly put your money in you deserve to lose it. At the end of the day for you to get the money 6 or 7 people have to lose theirs. Simple as that.

Eminem

Gurgle wrote:

Its coming from the people you con into 'joining'. Your game is to convince them that they can find another 10 people each that they too can con money out of.

Not odd at all really, just that 15% of people end up with money belonging to the other 85%. Those 85% never get any money back.

Simplified:
Put an ad in the paper saying "Send me €10 and I'll send you details on how to make €1,000,000".
For every person that sends you €10, send them these instructions:
'Put an ad in the paper saying "Send me €10 and I'll send you details on how to make €10,000"'.
It will work until everyone inclined to make blind investments has learned what to expect from this one.
How many people would you expect to send another €10 when they see the add the second time?

None id say .

Sherlock

There was a dreadful woman on Gerry Ryans show this morning defending the Liberty scheme in west Cork and how shes made 80k from it (yes 80k!). When Ryan tried to ask her what she gave to people who gave her 5k she said she gave them a "vision". Loads of other claptrap about how she and others were offerning people a chance to make serious money.
No matter how much Ryan tried to explain that for one person to make 8k seven other people had to lose 1k each she just giggled her way through the interview and said she was just earning money like anyone else!
She also said she had declared the money to the revenue (yeah right!) but would be claiming expenses from the cost of promoting the scheme!.
In one way I don't feel sorry for people who lose money in theses scams because they're either very stupid or very greedy for believing you can make money from relying on an endless supply of members to the scheme.

Gandhi

Deleted User wrote:

...a friend of mine made a good suggestion in the pub lately. What if everyone who knew of someone involved in the schemes were to pass that name on to Revenue? Would Revenue have an obligation to check whether the person filed CAT returns in respect of the money or 'gifts' received?

It could stamp out the scams anyway. On the other hand, call me old fashioned but there is something about squealing to Revenue that I just hate - it's a post-colonial thing involving a resistance to carrying out the dirty work for those in authority...

Would it work?

What if we put an ad in the paper, saying that for everyone who sends us €10, we will report one pyramid scheme to the tax man?

Each person who sends us money will get a list of names of the people on the 2nd tier of that pyramid. They can then put an ad in the paper saying that for everyone who sends them €10, they will report one of these people to the tax man.

Each person who sends them €10 will get a list of the third tier of the pyramid etc. etc.

A pyramid scheme of pyramid schemes to destroy all pyramid schemes. We will all be billionaires!!!!

dannyd20

Angels wrote:

These schemes were in Albania it collapsed & 1,500 people comittied suicide

link please or is this a madey-uppy factoid?

How widespread are these schemes in Ireland? I don't personally know anyone who is involved in one. Anyone dumb enough to 'invest' money in these things deserves what's coming to them.

Meh

dannyd20 wrote:

link please or is this a madey-uppy factoid?

It's true; when the Albanian pyramid schemes inevitably collapsed, the Albanian government collapsed as well.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm: "By March 1997, Albania was in chaos. The government had lost control of the south. Many in the army and police force had deserted, and 1 million weapons had been looted from the armories. Evacuation of foreign nationals and mass emigration of Albanians began. The government was forced to resign."

Anyone dumb enough to 'invest' money in these things deserves what's coming to them.

I agree; I just know they'll come whining for government handouts and rebates from the taxpayer when they lose their money though...

FX Meister

Angels wrote:

These schemes were in Albania it collapsed & 1,500 people comittied suicide now someone tell me that these schemes work & you live happily ever after ya right.

Wow. Well I for one think the world is a better place without morons like that anyway.

dannyd20

Meh wrote:

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm

Thanks for the link, I was aware that these schemes were operated (and collapsed) in Albania but I was specifically questioning the 1500 suicides bit

Sharza-

I think people would be surprised to learn that Pyramid schemes exist here in alot of difirent legal forms, but are still just as dishonest a way of making money as regular pyramid schemes.

Take the whole *I wont mention the name but its a brochure that comes through your door with lots of house cleaning style gadgets*, that right there is a pyramid scheme type thing. Reason its not ilegal is because you can make money from selling products however, it is nearly impossible to make money off selling the products, as the cost of the brochures makes it so dificult to make money off the products of which you only get like 10% commision on.

So how the main company is making money is not from the products either really, its from selling the brochures to people, who in turn realise this is a scam and cant make money from it so they take the alternate route to hopefully break even, which is to recruit 3+? (i forget the figure) more people who in turn have to buy brochures, and the first person gets a bit of cash for that, and the next 3 people begin the chain all over again.

My friend nearly got caught up in it last year in college, he saw that poster "Wanna make 600+ Euro a week? Call this number" so he did to see what it was about, turns out it was this thing, and we copped it after we thought about it for a while.

FX Meister

So do what I do. call that number, pretend you are interested and get them to send you a brochure. Then when they call to check up just say you threw it in the bin.

ressem

Not sure that it was suicides, from the IMF article

Some 2,000 people had been killed in the violence that followed the pyramid schemes' collapse.

As for being "dumb" and "morons", participants tend to see themselves as the orchestrators not the to-be-victims.

Which is probably why you have people like those on the radio and boards like these defending the scheme.

I would think that the revenue would see it as an illegal lottery, despite using language like 'gifts'.

FX Meister

Well usually when it gets on the radio the fear sets in and this leads to an early collapse. So if you have money invested in the scheme the best thing for you to do is defend it on the radio. What I find really funny is when it does collapse you get loads of people trying to get there money back and claiming they were ripped off. They see easy monry dangled in front of them and their greed just takes over. Then they can't take the consequences.

Gurgle

Sharza- wrote:

Ia brochure that comes through your door with lots of house cleaning style gadgets*, that right there is a pyramid scheme type thing.

No its not, its a worthless franchise which is a different scam entirely.

Femelade

dannyd20 wrote:

How widespread are these schemes in Ireland? I don't personally know anyone who is involved in one. Anyone dumb enough to 'invest' money in these things deserves what's coming to them.

mostly in west cork afaik.
i know about 20 people who are involved in them, usually locally started (not the big ones where u have to go to germany)
i know 2 guys who have both got 2 payments of €8000 in the past 2 weeks. they are now putting money back into it to get they're friends up to the top, wether they get backers or not.

there was another local one that was started, i think 2 people got payments of €8000 from it, but nobody could get anymore backers, so it fell through, the people who recieved the money gave it all back to the people who had put it in.

FX Meister

Ahhh, that was nice.

homah_7ft

Anyone here ever play the lotto?

FX Meister

No, is that some kind of pyramid scheme?

wasper

dannyd20 wrote:

link please or is this a madey-uppy factoid?

How widespread are these schemes in Ireland? I don't personally know anyone who is involved in one. Anyone dumb enough to 'invest' money in these things deserves what's coming to them.

It's true, in the early 90s Americans of Albanian origin went back to Albania with a pyramid scheme. You put your money into these financial institutes & get paid very high interest rate. Because Albania had just come out of the dark ages, all the country joined in. Even Banks & politicains welcomed those charlatans. The whole country joined & that's why hundreds thousands lost money, because they ran out of people. Politicians ended up in jail, the charlatans some of them run away back to Ameirca & some were imprisoned. There were riots all over the country.