Tag: Ponzi schemes

This time – Gold!

A few days ago, I quit communicating with a young woman supposedly living in Los Angeles calling herself Ellie. She was one of several young women who have “accidently” gotten a hold of me on Telegram – a secure platform boasting end-to-end encryption, enabling privacy for any number of purposes.

For the most part the purposes I have encountered have included an investment scheme, usually involving Cryptocurrency. Ellie started out differently. When I asked if she was doing Crypto, she answered that she had lost in the low six-figures in Crypto.

Her investments were in gold… but it sure sounded a lot like the pitch for Crypto.

When the subject of investing in gold came up, I politely declined and we had conversations covering other areas, such as her desire to ride a horse, or her plans to visit her parents in Singapore, or another plan to visit Japan, or even telling me about the time she got mugged in Paris. France.

Eventually, though, every conversation we had (with the full knowledge of my wife) circled back to an invitation to invest in gold. I came to realize that my conversations with Ellie had only continued because I was, to her, a project, not a person.

Here’s a bulletin – I am not a project. I have more than a few friends who are much better off than I will ever be (barring an unlikely win in the lottery) and none of them has treated me as a project needing their assistance. My friends know that thanks to good money management on my part, I am in relatively good shape financially. I have what I need to thrive. I am not some poor schlub needing a fabulous investment opportunity handed to me. I am an equal. Occasionally, one of my better-off friends will buy me lunch.

And I am good with that.

The better half and I won’t be driving around in a Bentley or one of Mr. Musk’s battery-powered vehicles anytime soon nor will we jump into an airliner to visit Singapore on a whim. However, we pay our bills and usually have enough left at the end of the month to put into savings and take the occasional trip to the Hideaway Ranch where we can soak naked in a hot tub.

Now, if Ellie or anyone else REALLY wants me to take advantage of a short-term investment opportunity with a large return, I need a lot more information than a name and a vague idea where that person lives. And in the unlikely event that I agree to make an investment, I need to know a heck of a lot more about where my money will be going. I don’t care to be providing a dividend for someone further up in the food chain in some Ponzi scheme.

Some years ago, I fell in love with the movie NETWORK. William Holden’s character was in the process of breaking up an affair with Faye Dunaway’s character, delivering the line that Ms. Dunaway’s character was “… television incarnate… shallow, vapid, and lacking any sort of soul.” (I am paraphrasing, here.) I thought of that movie in my dealings with Ellie. She (and others like her) are the Internet incarnate. Shallow, vapid, and lacking any sort of soul. All I can do at this point is to say bye bye. Better luck with the next person you wish to sucker into your investment scheme.

Gold standard, indeed!

Be Seeing You

Crypto Through the Tulips

Crypto Through the Tulips

Yeah. I know. It’s a terrible pun. But bear with me.

Over the past year or so, I’ve had the occasional contact with women with *ahem* obvious assets who, when questioned, say something about dealing in cryptocurrency. Just the other day, a woman tried to get me into a conversation about Crypto. Funny how the conversation came to an abrupt halt when I said no. No Crypto. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nyet! Considering last year’s dramatic drop in the value (?) of Crypto, I wonder about the wisdom of even considering it as an investment, being somewhere between a Ponzi scheme and outright robbery. This latest exchange brought to mind “Tulipmania” as happened in Holland at the first part of the seventeenth century.

To recap: Between 1634 and February 3, 1637, someone had the bright idea that Tulips had value beyond just a couple of stray Guilders hanging around the windmill. The value of Tulips skyrocketed toward the end of the year 1636 and February 1637. On February third, the value of Tulips dropped like a rock, eventually hitting pre-Tulipmania levels in a few short weeks.

Although I can’t put a date on it, the same thing happened to Crypto sometime last year. It was floating high, then all of a sudden, the value dropped like a rock. Recent attempts to interest me in Crypto are likely from people who may have been burned.

I told the latest person who attempted to get me interested that whatever she did with crypto was her choice – I wasn’t going to discourage her. (Well, this may be construed as discouragement to her and others, but since I suspect that I won’t be hearing from her again, I’m not losing any sleep.)

Crypto is not the first time nor is it the last time I’ve brushed up against a shady investment. I mentioned the term “Ponzi Scheme.” Other variations are referred to as “Pyramid Schemes” or the more sophisticated (and somewhat more legitimate) “Multi-Level Marketing.”

I recall being out shooting pictures for my high school yearbook when I was approached by someone not much older than I was driving a top-of-the-line Cadillac. There was a short pitch, followed by an invitation to a presentation held at the local YMCA the next evening. I was one of a room filled with people who were invited to participate in something called “Dare To Be Great!” Someone named Glen Turner had been selling cosmetics to a large degree of success. We were invited to take his course, “Dare To Be Great” so that we could sell others on the course to be able to sell others on the course ad-infinitum. It only cost $400 (this was 50 years ago) I didn’t have, and I saw little or no reason to even find the money to invest. Mr. Tolliver (the person who invited me to the course) was disappointed, I’m sure. I wondered for a while how long he was going to be able to afford his Cadillac.

There were several points in time where I encountered Amway. One was when I answered an ad and was invited to a house in an eastern suburb of Columbus Ohio where I was pitched by a man whose wife was running a daycare business with boxes of soap and evidence of several other MLM deals the couple had going. One thing I will say – Amway had some decent products. For some time I was a regular purchaser of their laundry detergent – at first from my then, Father-in-Law, and later from a friend I used to work with. Neither made a career of the business but managed to make a few bucks on the side.

Most of us are looking for ways of making a few bucks on the side.

A woman I know in Japan is out-earning her day job by a side hustle involving something called “Bey Blades.” There’s a site where another woman I am acquainted with bares her body for “tips” on a site called “Only Fans.” Another former co-worker drives an Uber (or is that Lyft) part-time. Or there was the operator of a local pizza buffet who maintained a room full of machines vending cheap trinkets and gumballs in his son’s name. For that matter, I can monetize my little blurbs on this site for tips, or coffee, or to sell my books.

But not now.

Spring is around the corner and the better half is making noises about planting tulips.

Be Seeing You!