Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is again warn­ing peo­ple of pyra­mid schemes say­ing they could be fronts for mon­ey laun­der­ing and fi­nanc­ing of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties such as drugs, hu­man traf­fick­ing and il­le­gal firearm trade.

Speak­ing at the week­ly po­lice me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Grif­fith, in ex­plain­ing how the scheme works, con­demned “greedy” sup­port­ers adding that such ac­tions will cause fi­nan­cial grief for oth­er peo­ple who have been cheat­ed out of their mon­ey.

“Start with six peo­ple they all have to find $60,000 each. Fair enough. Six peo­ple would get $60,000 by find­ing 36 oth­er peo­ple. For those peo­ple to ben­e­fit they would have to get $360,000. For them to do that they would have to find 260 peo­ple. Lev­el four is the im­por­tant lev­el. For 1,296 peo­ple to ben­e­fit that means you would have to find $12,000,960 for each of them to get five times the amount. This is where we are right now in this coun­try. These peo­ple now have to find 7,776 peo­ple for them to get five times the amount. When this hap­pens that is when it will col­lapse,” Grif­fith said.

“So the peo­ple who are ben­e­fit­ting here are those who are speak­ing the most. But for you to get $10,000 it means six oth­er poor peo­ple’s fam­i­lies will lose ten grand. When these 7,700 peo­ple can­not get 46,000 peo­ple they are go­ing to lose their mon­ey and it will crash. The pyra­mid scheme will col­lapse even­tu­al­ly and when it col­laps­es these peo­ple (at the top) would ben­e­fit from these peo­ple (at the bot­tom) if the 7,700 peo­ple get their $10,000, 46,000 peo­ple would have lost their $10,000,” he added.

Grif­fith said that peo­ple who con­tin­ue to praise the pyra­mid scheme do so be­cause of their ig­no­rance in maths, ac­count­ing and busi­ness.

“A busi­ness does not work by me just putting in $10,000 and get­ting back $60,000. That shows greed, stu­pid­i­ty.”

Grif­fith, in re­fer­ring to the re­cent in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Drugs Sou-Sou, ex­plained fur­ther that there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween a sou-sou and a pyra­mid scheme.

“This is not a sou-sou. Putting in $10,000 to get $50,000, with­out putting in $50,000, is not a sou-sou. The pub­lic is be­ing mis­led by de­vi­ous peo­ple. This is not a sou-sou, it is a pyra­mid scheme...and it will col­lapse.”

Speak­ing on the cur­rent Drugs Sou-Sou mat­ter, Act­ing DCP Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, with the ‘main sub­ject’ Ker­ron Clarke be­ing sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave by the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF). 

He said the court is cur­rent­ly ad­dress­ing three mat­ters un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act: the seizure of $655,000 which oc­curred on Au­gust 25; a seizure of $707,500 which took place on Sep­tem­ber 2, and the seizure of $6.4 mil­lion on Oc­to­ber 27.

He said on Sep­tem­ber 22, a TTDF of­fi­cer who was found with a firearm at the ad­dress was al­so de­tained.

Two in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force and the Unit­ed King­dom are as­sist­ing with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, with the UK of­fi­cers in­volved via vir­tu­al con­nec­tions.

Grif­fith again re­it­er­at­ed that it is the right of the TTPS to in­ves­ti­gate DSS as “such schemes have been used in oth­er places as a front for mon­ey laun­der­ing, for drugs.

“Must we al­ways take it that every time we find a quan­ti­ty of mon­ey it is for poor peo­ple? Is poor peo­ple go­ing to be the ex­cuse as a cov­er for some­thing that could be wrong? It can­not be. They have set up schemes like this to wash their mon­ey and use that for the peo­ple who has a con­cern. I chal­lenge you to prove to me that every sin­gle cent of that $22 mil­ion has been le­git.”

“If some­thing like this can be il­le­gal it al­lows crim­i­nal el­e­ments to build such a fran­chise to buy drugs weapons and use the ex­tra funds to buy off po­lice of­fi­cers and of­fi­cers of the ju­di­cial sys­tem. That is what the prime min­is­ter is speak­ing about when he says some­thing like this could crip­ple the coun­try.”

“I am not go­ing to try to jus­ti­fy or clar­i­fy or give any rel­e­vance to the or­gan­is­ers of DSS. We have our job to do, DSS has theirs. No one ex­ter­nal with this in­ves­ti­ga­tion is go­ing to in­flu­ence, com­pro­mise or pres­sure me with re­gard to how this is hap­pen­ing,” Grif­fith said. (RDR)