“VOUCHER” PYRAMID SCHEMES
Talk about a way to run a Pyramid Scheme Scam and produce the promise of
value – give some bunch of dummies a voucher instead of any products or services
that are worth anything! In the case of International Metals and Trade they gave
vouchers on gold and jewelry at least that were theoretically redeemable
(Florida hit 1996). International Heritage (see SEC hits) did the same. Last
year on the Internet “Meridiat” took the Pyramid Scheme cake! Send them $100 a
month to feed into a binary and when you get to the price of a litho print of
some unknown artist they will send you the reprint. This is the height of --
money for worthless paper and then trade the worthless paper into more worthless
paper of unknown value.
The interesting thing about the current round of voucher Pyramid Schemes is that
they are all offshore. The Meridiat pyramid was out of Holland (servers and
headquarters both). A rumor reached me yesterday that since their expose on the
MLM WatchDog.com that they are moving the Pyramid Scheme to Malta. Why? The
Dutch authorities might hit them so they are moving to Malta because there are
no laws about Pyramid Schemes there. Don’t worry, there are others such as a
Pyramid Scheme voucher diamond deal out of Hong Kong to suck money from the
unwary.
The way this Pyramid Scheme works is simple. Send $100 a month and get a voucher
each month. When you have accumulated $1000 worth of Vouchers in the Pyramid
Scheme you can redeem this “rare valuable reproduction” of the original. The
Pyramid Scheme Scamsters know that most people will lose part of the vouchers
and often quit after several payments (not making any money out of scam) and the
Pyramid Scheme gets to keep that money! Value of reproduction – Who knows!
Certainly no art dealers that I asked, thought there was any value!
Once again the question is would a customer buy this product? The Answer is NO!
A $1000 for a lithograph? It would have to be old and rare. But even more would
a customer buy layaway vouchers
At $100 per month until they got the lithograph? NO!
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