I Lost More Than $2000 On A Pyramid Scheme
Don’t be fooled just because it looks professional
It was January of 2018. My friend told me that I should withdraw all the money I put into this website. He was telling me that he had a funny feeling about what was going on behind the doors of this company. I did withdraw a little bit of money and put it onto another of my accounts. I only transferred about ten percent of my investment as I thought there would not be anything fishy going on. The next morning I wanted to check on my balance and it showed that this web address does not exist. This was the point when I knew I had lost all that money.
It sounded too good to be true
I was on vacation visiting friends and one of them told me about this new investment he has made and he gets an return on investment (ROI) of about three to five percent each week. He asked me to join under his name so he can get a little commission off me. I was curious and wanted to get more information about how a company can make this much money and pay it out directly to its members.
Back home I did a little research on this company and was surprised by how many articles and news stories there were that covered their method of making money. The company is registered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and as far as I knew the UAE is one of the strictest countries when it comes to doing illegal business, money laundering, or going bankrupt with a company. I thought that it must be a promising point for my list of pros and cons about this company. In the contact details were an address and e-mail one could contact to get information, at least it looked like it. The owners or founders’ names were nowhere to be found, but I thought on a lot of websites there are no names of the owners or any employees when it is just an online business as it was at this point.
I was somehow convinced that this might be a legit company and wanted to get to know their concept. I asked my friend and he told me that members had to buy packages of $50 which will be used to build cryptocurrency mining plants in Iceland. According to the company’s website they, were mining and trading Bitcoin, Ethereum and, Litecoin to make these kinds of profits. Those three cryptocurrencies were the major currencies at this point and the hype over cryptocurrencies has not yet taken off.
My friend asked me if I would invest now since I had gathered all this information and was pretty convinced that it may be legit. I remembered that he wanted me to sign up under his name so he can get a commission off me and I checked into that. It is a twelve-stage commission system. The first stage was a twelve percent commission of everything the person, that signed up directly under my name, had invested in this company. This means that when he buys a package of $50 I get $6 and when he buys twenty packages I get $120. Stages 2 to 5 had a five percent commission and stages 6 through 12 a 3% commission.
My first investment
I was stunned how far down one can earn a commission of other people signing up under people who have signed up under my name. I started to get doubts again and wondered where all this money comes from, but did not look further into this. The thought of trying it out with some spare $50 I could risk was taking over, it was all I could think about for hours.
$50 is a lot of money for a lot of people and I had the thought of throwing it away and watch what happens next. It did not feel right but I bought a package anyway. I checked in a week later and saw that my account balance has increased by $10 and I was surprised how fast I had a return on investment.
My first commission
I increased my investment with another two packages and told my friends about it. Some were curious and some just said they do not buy what I was telling them. My first commission was $120 from a friend who said he did not care if his investment of $1000 gets lost. Little did he know that the commission I got from him was almost as much money as I had invested.
He was the only one I was able to sign up under my name, but he did sign up a couple of his buddies of whom I also got a commission. In total, I got a commission of five people.
Letting the money roll in
After a couple of months and a couple more investments, I decided to withdraw a bit of the money that I had gained by investing. My first withdrawal was about $500 in Bitcoin and I just put it onto another bank account and let the value rise since the hype over cryptocurrencies was just taking off.
Making money fast by doing nothing was all I could think of at this time. I did not withdraw any more money and just reinvested everything that I gained from the commissions as well as my return on investment. I was on fire and wanted as much as I could get.
The warning signs
As the media most covered topic at this time, cryptocurrencies prices rose to unseen heights as everybody bought them. I got a feeling that it may be a bad sign that the hype reaches its highest point and then everything will collapse, but the fear of not making more money and chickening out early held me tight.
In early spring my friend told me that he heard there was something suspicious going on behind the scenes and that I should withdraw some money. The hype was still there and nothing had changed in the past weeks. I still made a lot of money that I constantly reinvested. I told the people who have signed up under my name that there might be something suspicious going on and I was told to withdraw my investments.
The crisis starts now
A day after I placed some of my money on a different account I was about to check on my account balance to see how much money I have made over the past week. I typed the link of the website into my browser and pressed enter to see that my account balance was ZERO. I initially thought there must be a glitch. I refreshed this website multiple times, just to see no changes. I asked my friends whether they were having the same problems as I did and they did.
On the Internet were a lot of other people complaining about the same issue and just a day later this website has completely vanished. It was nowhere to be found and thousands of users lost their money.
I should have known
Before having invested in this fraud I should have realized that this system will not last long. When out of $50 someone invests $26.50 go to other members who are awaiting their commission, and we are not talking about the money the people were gaining each week yet, the system will soon run out of resources to pay its members when no one is investing new money and not just reinvesting what they have gained, because this money only wanders between the members.
A couple of months later I found out that this mining plant in Iceland has never existed and it was all a lie to persuade us, members, to put in more money.
In the end, I am a bit happy that I have made this mistake, because now I know and will not repeat it. But I am also sad that I have made other people lose the money they have invested.
I also wonder what happened to the owners of this website. Are they living their life or are they somewhere stuck behind bars? I do not know but I am curious to know.
