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A pyramid scheme is a business model which, rather than earning money ... (1 + 2 + 4 + 8) in the scheme—with the Airplane Game as the example, the person at the top ...
МММ was a Russian company that perpetrated one of the world's largest Ponzi schemes of all time. By different estimates from 5 to 40 million people lost up to $10 billion. The company started attracting money from private investors, promising annual returns of up to 1,000%.
BurnLounge (shut down as pyramid scheme by FTC in 2012) Equinox International (dissolved in 2001) European Grouping of Marketing Professionals /CEDIPAC SA (dissolved in 1995) European Home Retail (dissolved in 2007) Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing (dissolved in 2013)
A Ponzi scheme (/ ˈpɒnzi /, Italian: [ˈpontsi]) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. [1] Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, this type of scheme misleads investors by either falsely suggesting that profits are derived from legitimate business ...
December 11, 2008. Bernard Lawrence Madoff (/ ˈmeɪdɔːf / MAY-dawf; [2] April 29, 1938 – April 14, 2021) was an American financial criminal and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, worth an estimated $65 billion. [3][4] He was at one time chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. [5]
Franchise fraud in U.S. federal law. The FBI website states: "pyramid schemes — also referred to as franchise fraud or chain referral schemes — are marketing and investment frauds in which an individual is offered a distributorship or franchise to market a particular product. The real profit is earned, not by the sale of the product, but by ...
MMM was established in 1989 by Sergei Mavrodi, [2] his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi, and Olga Melnikova. The name of the company was taken from the first letters of the three founders' surnames. Initially, Mavrodi operated a network of computer-importing cooperatives. [6] In January 1992, tax police accused MMM of tax evasion, leading to the ...
Chain letter. A chain letter is a message that attempts to convince the recipient to make a number of copies and pass them on to a certain number of recipients. The "chain" is an exponentially growing pyramid (a tree graph) that cannot be sustained indefinitely. Common methods used in chain letters include emotionally manipulative stories, get ...