SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Less than two weeks af­ter the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) warned the pub­lic about get­ting in­volved in pyra­mid schemes, a “Bless­ing Cir­cle” with over 1,200 mem­bers has “crashed,” leav­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of its mem­bers with­out their hard-earned mon­ey.

The Bless­ing Cir­cle is just a dis­guised pyra­mid scheme and while “ad­mins” give the groups dif­fer­ent names, call­ing some “sou-sous,” they are all the same ba­sic scheme, ac­cord­ing to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU).

In the pyra­mid scheme group called “Bless­ing Over­flow,” mem­bers were asked to pay $700 to join with the promise that they would re­ceive over $18,000 in “bless­ings.” The pay­out was de­pen­dent on re­cruit­ing new mem­bers to ‘in­vest.’

Now, group mem­bers are hunt­ing for a man known on­ly as “Caz­im,” who was said to be the group ad­min­is­tra­tor. Their hunt be­gan sev­er­al days ago when “Caz­im” sent the fol­low­ing mes­sage via Tele­graph to 1,272 mem­bers: “The main pur­pose of this ac­tiv­i­ty was to help each oth­er min­imise their fi­nan­cial bondage which would have as­sist­ed (not give) in help­ing one at­tain fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty. Due to un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, it is with deep re­gret, Bless­ings over­flow has suf­fered a lost in the in­vest­ment of monies which has caused us to come to a com­plete halt (crash).

“With the de­creas­ing vol­ume of peo­ple in­vest­ing with­in this sou-sou and many oth­er fac­tors and in­di­ca­tors, we found it to be the rea­son as to why we can’t gen­er­ate enough prof­it to con­tin­ue the flow­ers. We would like to thank all who have par­tic­i­pat­ed and en­trust­ed in us, but we would al­so like to re­mind you about the rules. (Non-re­fund­able) this was a risk! You’ll agreed to take this risk and the pay­ment was an 8:1 ra­tio. This is far be­yond our con­trol and we do sin­cere­ly apol­o­gize. If you have any fur­ther ques­tions please con­tact the ad­min­is­tra­tor that ad­vised you to the group. Thank you.”

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter he sent the mes­sage, “Caz­im” changed the group’s set­ting, bar­ring its par­tic­i­pants from re­spond­ing to his mes­sage.

But the group’s mem­bers were able to con­tin­ue com­mu­ni­cat­ing with each oth­er by chang­ing the group’s name.

“Who is Caz­im…some­body must know him!!! Send some kin­da in­for­ma­tion plz,” one mem­ber wrote.

“Imag­ine Caz­im gone with we good good 700 nah he had­da feel it,” an­oth­er wrote.

Oth­ers said they were nev­er told their ‘in­vest­ment’ was non-re­fund­able. Threats against “Caz­im’s” life soon be­gan to pour in.

One mem­ber found a pho­to which they claimed was of “Caz­im” and changed the group’s icon from a bag of mon­ey to the pho­to. “Caz­im’s” Face­book pro­file name was al­so shared with the group.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), ask­ing if there were any re­ports of peo­ple be­ing scammed in the ‘Bless­ing Cir­cle.’ How­ev­er, TTPS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion’s man­ag­er Fran­cis Joseph said the po­lice had no com­ment and did not re­spond to any oth­er ques­tions.

But the Bless­ings Cir­cle is not the on­ly group to crash in re­cent days. Sev­er­al days ago, a screen record­ing from an­oth­er Tele­graph group was re­leased on so­cial me­dia.

The “ad­min” sent a voice note to the group, say­ing, “Al­right, I fed up watch and read and try to keep up and all kin­da thing- hear what is the re­al scene- just like every oth­er of those groups in Trinidad, this one just crash and that $700 was non-re­fund­able, right?

“Every­body, when they join the group, know it was a risk, so that be­ing said you all have a blessed night.”

But in re­sponse to her mes­sage, one mem­ber replied with a voice note, laced with ex­ple­tives, threat­en­ing the mem­ber who she paid her $700 to.

The Face­book Mar­ket­place, where groups are cre­at­ed to buy and sell prod­ucts and ser­vices, has al­so been in­un­dat­ed over the past few days with posts en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to send pri­vate mes­sages to join ‘bless­ing cir­cles’ and ‘bless­ing sou-sous.’

Those who pro­mote the schemes claim to have ben­e­fit­ed from it al­ready. There are dif­fer­ent ‘in­vest­ment’ amounts, rang­ing from $100 to $15,000, with thou­sands promised as pay­outs.

What Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit says:

The FIU, in a re­cent re­lease, said pyra­mid schemes can be recog­nised due to the fol­low­ing fea­tures:

• They re­quire per­sons to join groups and make an ini­tial con­tri­bu­tion of mon­ey with the promise of a sig­nif­i­cant pay-out or re­turn on their con­tri­bu­tion at a lat­er date.

• They re­ly on the re­cruit­ment of new mem­bers to en­sure high pay-outs­—this is very dif­fer­ent from “sou-sou” arrange­ments for ex­am­ple, which do not re­quire the re­cruit­ment of new mem­bers and are not prof­it-mak­ing ven­tures.

• Ear­ly con­trib­u­tors to the scheme are paid from the mon­ey con­tributed by new­er mem­bers. Ex­ist­ing mem­bers are en­cour­aged to re­cruit new per­sons so that they can move to a dif­fer­ent “lev­el” or “cir­cle” which promis­es high­er re­turns on their con­tri­bu­tion. The over­all in­ten­tion is to get to the “high­est lev­el” or to the top of the pyra­mid which will pro­duce the high­est pay-outs, while the new mem­bers, those at the bot­tom of the pyra­mid, re­ceive the low­est re­turns on their con­tri­bu­tions. When few­er or no new mem­bers join the scheme, it col­laps­es and dis­ap­pears along with the pay­ment plat­form and the mon­ey that was ‘in­vest­ed.’