Posts that argue that the investigators concentrate on the organizers and that ordinary promoters may have little or nothing to fear send precisely the wrong message. The reality of cash-gifting is that the prey quickly becomes the predator.
These schemes are destructive, often encouraging prospects to charge cash to the limits of a credit card, hand the money to the top of the pyramid and await a return of 700 percent. They also are dominated by serial disingenuousness, if not a subculture whose inhabitants are taught (or learn by rote) to play dumb when the cops come knocking. Another problem is whack-a-mole. A scheme gets shut down and one immediately pops up to replace it.
Among the core dangers is that people who turned over $5,000 to "earn" $35,000 in return may become increasingly desperate if their payout does not materialize. In response, they may ramp up efforts to encourage others -- including loved ones and friends -- to charge to the limits of their credit cards. When that happens, the promoters are every bit as culpable as the organizers -- i.e., the "ordinary promoter" who is told he/she has nothing to fear from a prosecution standpoint just did the same thing as the organizers.
Of course, the organizers often have other lines in the stream in search of a large fish. That explains how Hank Needham, for example, can shift from promoting cash-gifting to promoting the 1-percent-a-day AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme to becoming a "manager" of ClubAsteria, which purported to be a humanitarian enterprise that paid between 3 percent and 8 percent a week.
The message in cash-gifting schemes these days is that it's all about humanitarianism, all about people helping other people to recognize the magical high tide that will lift all boats.
It's dangerous. Plain and simple.
EMG (Finanzas Forex) wasn't a cash-gifting scheme, but the outcome was the same. The returns never materialized. The ordinary promoters then were told that, if they wanted to get their money out, they had to recruit new members and pocket their cash. There was a "humanitarian" angle in that one, too.
Some of the marks were told that proceeds were being directed to help kidnapping victims in South America.
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