Ponzi schemes as we all know is a type of venture in which people are told to invest an amount of money with the promise of getting a certain percentage of their investment as profit after a period of time.
This scheme was developed by Charles Ponzi since 1920 but became popular in Nigeria since early last year due to the recent recession experienced in the country. The first of its kind in Nigeria was MMM that made so many people rich and also impoverished so many. The story of how MMM came and how they got so many mavros frozen is not new to any Nigerian at all.
After the MMM saga, so many other Ponzi schemes sprang up with new innovations of automatically matching people on who to provide help to on registration. The person matched to pay confirms the donor on receiving an alert of payment from his bank thereby putting the donor on the list of people awaiting to be matched to people to provide help. This innovation became the feature of so many newly developed Ponzi sites. It lasted for a while and was the talk of the town.
From springcash to suredonor, redemptioncash, 4by4cash, stainlesscash, solidcash, suredough, supercash, wexpress, donationhub, naijapay, doublepay, and a thousand others that sprang up.
At the long run, people started showing less interest on sites with this innovation reason being that so many cyber beggars sprang up on every Ponzi site. These cyber beggars beg the people they were matched to pay to confirm them with the promise that as soon as they get paid, they will pay back. Some fell victim of these beggars and lost a whole lot while some were sincere enough to pay back. Following this was the era of people that just register on Ponzi sites to cause trouble to people they were matched to pay. That is, they intentionally register on these Ponzi sites, but end up telling the person that they were matched to pay that they are not interested. This made so many people lose their money because of this new development.
To solve this problem, designers of these Ponzi sites developed a solution the “I REFUSE TO PAY BUTTON” that required the person that doesn’t want to participate any longer to click and get himself deleted from the system giving room for the recipient to get re-matched again. This lasted for a while and didn’t really solve the problem because these people blatantly refuse to click on that button, leaving these recipients on the losing side.
Immediately, another idea came up the “PURGE BUTTON”. This button was introduced to enable recipients delete donors that have refused to pay. Although this solved the problem, it created another problem of its own in that recipients willingly delete people that they have received alerts from. i.e. they delete someone that has paid them just to get matched again. This left sincere donors on the losing site as they lose both their money and the account created. Developers also came up with the idea of allowing a recipient to use the “PURGE BUTTON” once. This at least helped the process.
Currently, the Ponzi scheme wave is gradually dying off and soon, it will go into extinction because of the loss of interest on the part of participants who have lost their money through this scheme.
Conclusion:
The way out of this mess is for Nigerians to run away from Ponzi schemes as it is and will never be a good investment plan for anybody at all. The secret behind it is that the admins of these sites and people who entered early only benefit from it. Others who entered late are left with nothing after depositing a lot to it. Find other lucrative business and invest in and make sure you put all your efforts into it. We will like to hear your opinion; use the comment box and air your views. Do you agree with us? Or do you have a different view of this topical issue ravaging our country?
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