THE Institute of Solomon Islands Accountants (ISIA) has issued a warning to the country about the mischievousness of the current pyramid scheme called One Link Pacifica.
“Pyramid schemes such as One Link Pacifica work on the basis that the people who start it off collect all of the money paid into the scheme by the people who join afterwards and who end up with nothing,” said the President of the Institute, David Dennis.
ISIA said that there is no business on the planet which makes a cash flow profit of 100% or more each month as is promised by the promoters to investors in the scheme.
“Any such scheme exploits people’s desperation to improve their lives and who have limited means for doing so.
“Get rich schemes to become very attractive in such instances but eventually such schemes fail except for the founders who take it all,” ISIA said.
ISIA said that as the scheme starts to inevitably fail and people stop getting paid, it is often the case that the promoters will blame everyone else for stopping the money flow.
But the reality is that the scheme eventually grows too big to attract enough new investors’ cash to make the payments and the merry go round stops.
ISIA issued the warning after seeing some community leaders still supporting the pyramid scheme despite advice from the Central Bank that the scheme is fraudulent.
“We are already seeing this con scheme starting to fail with an increasing number of people now not being paid.
“This number of unpaid participants is going to rapidly become much bigger now that the scheme is in its dying stages,” ISIA said.
