Between the landlady who tried to sleep in my bed, the married dude who invited me to "spend an evening together", the old man who impersonated his own son on Facebook and various others, I thought I'd witnessed some of the darker stuff that human nature might have to offer.
Until a friend tried to recruit me into a Ponzi scheme.
I have now thought about this encounter for several days, and I've come to the sad conclusion that a pyramid from any other angle is still a pyramid. You can argue with semantics, but not geometry.
I'm torn between two reactions right now: 1) the urge to laugh uncontrollably and 2) deep, deep offense that someone who knew me actually thought I'd be an easy target. I mean hello! I know I'm a journalist with a college degree in a "social science," but seriously...
Anyway, this all began nearly a month ago, when a girl whom I'll call Mandy (because that is not her name) befriended me at a class we were both attending. She seemed really sweet, and when we all exchanged numbers at the end of the class I got hers and she got mine.
We became Facebook friends. Her profile contained nothing weird or overly alarming. She called me once or twice to hang out and both times I was busy, but we agreed to meet up at an indefinite later date. It wasn't until the third or fourth time we'd met that she mentioned to me that in addition to being a project manager, she'd recently started her own business.
That's cool! I thought. Lots of my friends in Delhi have recently started businesses.
Then a few days ago, she called me again with an unusual request:
"Listen," she said. "Remember that business I told you about? We're looking to take on one or two other partners...why don't you come hear about it?"
She said that a senior partner was in town from Malaysia and the three of us could meet for coffee and talk about it. I had doubts, but she was a friend and there was an outside chance that the idea might be interesting. I asked her what her partner's name was and the name of the company, and this is when things got weird: she asked me why I wanted to know. "So I can look them up online," I said. "First let's see if we're a good fit," she answered. "You don't need to know all this other stuff yet." And then, as an explanation, "we looking for partners for our global expansion."
Cagey Delhi entrepreneurs with would-be ideas for world domination are a rupee a dozen, unfortunately. At this point I regretted agreeing to lunch, which I already realized would involve some amount of swindling. I figured maybe they were a disorganized and ill-informed outfit looking to recruit some gullible American into financing what would turn out to be a badly prepared business plan, if there was a business plan at all.
I arrived at the coffee shop early, she came in a few minutes later.
"So the senior partner is busy with a meeting, but his wife will join us," she said. "She also has twelve years of corporate experience, but she recently left her job and has had big success in this business." Again, there were no details forthcoming about the wife's "corporate experience."
We'd been in the coffee shop for about fifteen minutes when the wife walked in with another woman. Both were well-dressed and had nice hair; they looked nothing like fugitives.
We ordered drinks.
The women introduced themselves. They all had engineering backgrounds, they told me. One of them claimed to have an MBA. The wife, it soon became clear, was the ringleader. Despite the vagueness of her described "corporate experience" she soon filled me in on her professional and personal details, most of which, I'm entirely sure, were fabricated.
As of yet, nothing had been said about the nature of their business, which, when alluded to at all, was referenced only as "the project."
She veered for a while into the meaning of her existence. She asked me about what I wanted to do next with my life, and I outlined my interest in new media businesses. In the back of my mind, I was already thinking about how this might work out as a story, if not for a newspaper then at least for a cocktail party.
At one point, sipping the whipped cream off my latte (I know I lost some of you at that, oh well) I asked her what her project actually was, since we had yet to discuss it.
"Ok, so first I have to ask about some of your qualifications," she said. I nodded.
"First off, do you object to working in a different industry? Like ecommerce? See, no company can afford to ignore ecommerce these days..."
"Of course not," I said, savoring my latte foam.
"Second off, you have to put in an initial investment, something that makes sense for you, but around $4000 to $10,000. So are you ok with the money part of it?"
She seemed particularly keen on this point, pausing and waiting for my answer. Up until then I'd had my doubts about their enterprise, but it wasn't until she asked about the money that I was finally sure what was happening.
"I guess so," I said. "But first you have to tell me about your 'project'."
She went into another long ramble about how Bill Gates had started Microsoft, and now it was "self-sustaining," and it would continue to yield income until he died. The fact that Bill Gates had put years of his life into his company didn't come up, nor did Microsoft's thousands of employees. She said that her company was an e-commerce portal, the third-largest in the world behind Ebay and Amazon.
"We're a multinational conglomerate," she said. "We're into insurance, banking, travel, lifestyle goods."
At this point, it ocurred to me to ask why a multinational conglomerate needed my $10,000 to fund its so-called "global expansion", but I knew there would be no answer. She explained a few of their products: luxury Swiss watches, vacation timeshares, international roaming services for phones.
"I want to have money, and I want time," she told me. "This offers me the chance to get both. Basically you have to buy a product - that's the initial investment - and then you sign up a friend. Every time you sign up your friend, you get 12% of their purchase. And every time they sign up a friend, you get 12% more."
No matter how many hundreds of people were involved in the referral chain, my 12% would remain unchanged on every transaction, she claimed, as if completely unaware of the mathematical impossibility of what she was suggesting.
Throughout this exchange, the other two people - my friend, and the MBA - had remained silent. The MBA watched the proceedings with an amused and distant stare. My friend, to her credit, had begun to sweat a bit.
I excused myself briefly to use the washroom. I took my purse, since I didn't put it past this trio of crooks to run off with it.
When I came back, more stories of fabulous wealth were in store.
"The company caps your potential income at Rs. 9 lakh a week," she said. Now, for those unfamiliar with Indian currency, an Indian engineering student who graduates in the top 5% of his class from a solid institution and gets signed up by a major company like Wipro would be thrilled to make Rs. 9 lakh in a year. It works out to about $18,000.
And this wasn't all!
"I've left my job behind in order to do this full time," she said. "I can provide for my son and do whatever else I please...and the best part is, we also have a nonprofit that works for underprivileged children."
At this point, research be damned, I was getting tired. I told them I had to leave. My friend said she'd pay for the coffee, and I split.
Wikipedia, that great storehouse of world knowledge, describes a Ponzi scheme as follows: "a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation."
After getting home, I looked up their conglomerate online, and found a few sad postings on Yahoo forums from people who'd put $4000 into the scheme and had yet to receive any products. The company had a website and a grainy YouTube video that sounded like it had been voiced by an out-of-work ringmaster. A contact address included neither phone number nor email address.
The nonprofit, meanwhile, had a more vigorous and networked webpage, which talked extensively of the importance of educating children. A link to some of their initiatives did mention a Rs. 5 lakh donation to an orphanage, which seemed like pretty chump change considering the outsize returns they were promising to attract theirvictims sellers.
Just for kicks, I made up an email address and wrote to the nonprofit about the possibility of volunteering with their India team, making sure to mention that I came from Canada (ergo, had deep pockets). Oddly enough, they have not replied...
***
For those who care, I reviewed "Recipes for Sad Women" over on Bookslut! Read the review here.
Until a friend tried to recruit me into a Ponzi scheme.
I have now thought about this encounter for several days, and I've come to the sad conclusion that a pyramid from any other angle is still a pyramid. You can argue with semantics, but not geometry.
I'm torn between two reactions right now: 1) the urge to laugh uncontrollably and 2) deep, deep offense that someone who knew me actually thought I'd be an easy target. I mean hello! I know I'm a journalist with a college degree in a "social science," but seriously...
Anyway, this all began nearly a month ago, when a girl whom I'll call Mandy (because that is not her name) befriended me at a class we were both attending. She seemed really sweet, and when we all exchanged numbers at the end of the class I got hers and she got mine.
We became Facebook friends. Her profile contained nothing weird or overly alarming. She called me once or twice to hang out and both times I was busy, but we agreed to meet up at an indefinite later date. It wasn't until the third or fourth time we'd met that she mentioned to me that in addition to being a project manager, she'd recently started her own business.
That's cool! I thought. Lots of my friends in Delhi have recently started businesses.
Then a few days ago, she called me again with an unusual request:
"Listen," she said. "Remember that business I told you about? We're looking to take on one or two other partners...why don't you come hear about it?"
She said that a senior partner was in town from Malaysia and the three of us could meet for coffee and talk about it. I had doubts, but she was a friend and there was an outside chance that the idea might be interesting. I asked her what her partner's name was and the name of the company, and this is when things got weird: she asked me why I wanted to know. "So I can look them up online," I said. "First let's see if we're a good fit," she answered. "You don't need to know all this other stuff yet." And then, as an explanation, "we looking for partners for our global expansion."
Cagey Delhi entrepreneurs with would-be ideas for world domination are a rupee a dozen, unfortunately. At this point I regretted agreeing to lunch, which I already realized would involve some amount of swindling. I figured maybe they were a disorganized and ill-informed outfit looking to recruit some gullible American into financing what would turn out to be a badly prepared business plan, if there was a business plan at all.
I arrived at the coffee shop early, she came in a few minutes later.
"So the senior partner is busy with a meeting, but his wife will join us," she said. "She also has twelve years of corporate experience, but she recently left her job and has had big success in this business." Again, there were no details forthcoming about the wife's "corporate experience."
We'd been in the coffee shop for about fifteen minutes when the wife walked in with another woman. Both were well-dressed and had nice hair; they looked nothing like fugitives.
We ordered drinks.
The women introduced themselves. They all had engineering backgrounds, they told me. One of them claimed to have an MBA. The wife, it soon became clear, was the ringleader. Despite the vagueness of her described "corporate experience" she soon filled me in on her professional and personal details, most of which, I'm entirely sure, were fabricated.
As of yet, nothing had been said about the nature of their business, which, when alluded to at all, was referenced only as "the project."
She veered for a while into the meaning of her existence. She asked me about what I wanted to do next with my life, and I outlined my interest in new media businesses. In the back of my mind, I was already thinking about how this might work out as a story, if not for a newspaper then at least for a cocktail party.
At one point, sipping the whipped cream off my latte (I know I lost some of you at that, oh well) I asked her what her project actually was, since we had yet to discuss it.
"Ok, so first I have to ask about some of your qualifications," she said. I nodded.
"First off, do you object to working in a different industry? Like ecommerce? See, no company can afford to ignore ecommerce these days..."
"Of course not," I said, savoring my latte foam.
"Second off, you have to put in an initial investment, something that makes sense for you, but around $4000 to $10,000. So are you ok with the money part of it?"
She seemed particularly keen on this point, pausing and waiting for my answer. Up until then I'd had my doubts about their enterprise, but it wasn't until she asked about the money that I was finally sure what was happening.
"I guess so," I said. "But first you have to tell me about your 'project'."
She went into another long ramble about how Bill Gates had started Microsoft, and now it was "self-sustaining," and it would continue to yield income until he died. The fact that Bill Gates had put years of his life into his company didn't come up, nor did Microsoft's thousands of employees. She said that her company was an e-commerce portal, the third-largest in the world behind Ebay and Amazon.
"We're a multinational conglomerate," she said. "We're into insurance, banking, travel, lifestyle goods."
At this point, it ocurred to me to ask why a multinational conglomerate needed my $10,000 to fund its so-called "global expansion", but I knew there would be no answer. She explained a few of their products: luxury Swiss watches, vacation timeshares, international roaming services for phones.
"I want to have money, and I want time," she told me. "This offers me the chance to get both. Basically you have to buy a product - that's the initial investment - and then you sign up a friend. Every time you sign up your friend, you get 12% of their purchase. And every time they sign up a friend, you get 12% more."
No matter how many hundreds of people were involved in the referral chain, my 12% would remain unchanged on every transaction, she claimed, as if completely unaware of the mathematical impossibility of what she was suggesting.
Throughout this exchange, the other two people - my friend, and the MBA - had remained silent. The MBA watched the proceedings with an amused and distant stare. My friend, to her credit, had begun to sweat a bit.
I excused myself briefly to use the washroom. I took my purse, since I didn't put it past this trio of crooks to run off with it.
When I came back, more stories of fabulous wealth were in store.
"The company caps your potential income at Rs. 9 lakh a week," she said. Now, for those unfamiliar with Indian currency, an Indian engineering student who graduates in the top 5% of his class from a solid institution and gets signed up by a major company like Wipro would be thrilled to make Rs. 9 lakh in a year. It works out to about $18,000.
And this wasn't all!
"I've left my job behind in order to do this full time," she said. "I can provide for my son and do whatever else I please...and the best part is, we also have a nonprofit that works for underprivileged children."
At this point, research be damned, I was getting tired. I told them I had to leave. My friend said she'd pay for the coffee, and I split.
Wikipedia, that great storehouse of world knowledge, describes a Ponzi scheme as follows: "a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation."
After getting home, I looked up their conglomerate online, and found a few sad postings on Yahoo forums from people who'd put $4000 into the scheme and had yet to receive any products. The company had a website and a grainy YouTube video that sounded like it had been voiced by an out-of-work ringmaster. A contact address included neither phone number nor email address.
The nonprofit, meanwhile, had a more vigorous and networked webpage, which talked extensively of the importance of educating children. A link to some of their initiatives did mention a Rs. 5 lakh donation to an orphanage, which seemed like pretty chump change considering the outsize returns they were promising to attract their
Just for kicks, I made up an email address and wrote to the nonprofit about the possibility of volunteering with their India team, making sure to mention that I came from Canada (ergo, had deep pockets). Oddly enough, they have not replied...
***
For those who care, I reviewed "Recipes for Sad Women" over on Bookslut! Read the review here.
This scheme never gets old. Right now I have a senior brother I know trying to get me into similar kind of stuff.. Some of the Nepalese singers and actors are included in it.
ReplyDeleteHe told me in such a way that these things would make me feel better to be associated with a fraud group.