Kingdom Billionaires Limited has warned the public to be wary of scammers who operate both online and offline to save them of their investment.
A statement issued by the company and signed by its CEO Tony Kwarteng, said many innocent people around the world have fallen victims to scammers both online and offline and as a result have lost several millions of their hard earned money to Ponzi and pyramid schemes.
“In effect, these victims lose their lifetime savings and some commit suicide due to hopelessness in recovering their lost money,” the statement said.
It said a Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported fixed returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors and perpetrators of Ponzi schemes often attracted new investors or clients by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk at all.
The statement said in most cases the scheme focused on attracting new funds to pay earlier investors to create the false impression that investors are profiting from a legitimate business.
“This situation mounts an enormous amount of pressure on the organiser of the scheme to keep adding new investors until it eventually becomes unsustainable and will finally collapse,” the statement said.
It explained that organisers of a Ponzi scheme can be a financial institution, a company, a group or an individual, adding that though Ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme are often used interchangeably, there were some important differences between them.
“Essentially, a Ponzi schemer will only ask you to invest in something. This can either be minerals like gold, diamond, bauxite, oil, etc. or paper products such as stocks. In this case, you will not be asked to take any more action than handing over your money. In fact, the organiser will claim to take care of the rest and give you your returns,” the statement said.
It said pyramid scheme would offer you an opportunity to make the money yourself and investors know from the beginning that they are paying money for the chance of getting it back through recruiting others.
The statement observed that another important difference was that, a Ponzi scheme was generally based on a fraudulent investment idea, whilst a pyramid scheme could have a basic product on offer, and there is an opportunity for new investors or recruits to make profit.
“In effect, Ponzi schemes fail where new investors fail to join the scheme and where existing investors decide to cash out their funds,” the statement said.
By Times Reporter
