Foolish investors

Cesar Gorillo .

IT’S quite funny how foolish investors are flocking our police departments after being victimized by investment scams.

One of my investigator police friend laughed at these people because according to them, when these people got millions in income at their first few months of investment when the scam did not yet collapse, they never shared their income and they simply kept silent about it. Now that the scam has collapsed, they will bother the police department with those complaints knowing full well that they will never recover their investments anymore.

Only this day, I opened my TV and saw the news of an OFW who invested his P1 million in hard-earned money from Qatar and could never recover it.  Another police officer obtained loans and even got fellow investors to place their investment through him totaling P3 million and there is no way he can recover it and had to face angry co-investors with whom he got the money.

These kinds of scams arose when the Bitcoin fever hit the world as those who initially invested 10 dollars found their invested grew to 50 thousand dollars.  These Bitcoins later metamorphosed into so many types of Bitcoin investments and hit the world like a tornado. There are Bitcoin investment that are considered legal as in the US, but China and Korea have totally banned it resulting in its 50-percent decline in investment value across the world.  I don’t have any question on this type of investment because it has not been considered legal in the US and some countries. Even Philippine government investment in-charge are planning to draw policies on this.

But the problem is that so many investment scams pretending to be Bitcoin investment are rising like mushrooms. I made a research on this and there are only five questions that should be answered and if the response is no, then that investment is a pyramiding or Ponzi scam:

• Does it have an address and contact number?
• Does it have a known owner?
• Is it legally registered in a government agency?
• Is it engaged in legitimate business to invest the funds generated?
• Does it make regular financial report?

If the answer is no to these very important questions, the investment is a 100-percent pyramiding scam because the income does not come from business but through new investments recruited by the members. It is a matter of time that it will collapse because it cannot anymore pay the millions or billions in overdue earnings once all possible investors have been recruited and there are no longer new ones. Of course, the new investors will earn in a few months or years but can no longer recover their millions in investment when the investment scam collapses. Then the investor will find out that the Internet records that always appear on their cellphones and computers are no longer there. Biglang naglaho parang bula! And they have nowhere to retrieve them.

In the Philippines, the so-called “huloga scam” where a P10-investment will become P400 has long collapsed but later resurfaced in the so-called Aman Futures and Rasuman scams that offered interest rates as high as 45 percent in 30 days which victimized hapless investors  a total of P30 billion.

Now, many investment scams are surfacing, offering as high as 30 percent interest per month on one’s investment.  One investment scheme came to me personally and asked that if I have P1 million, I will recover my investment within four months because they will be offering 30 percent earnings per month and even brought me to their office to show that they are really paying their investors and that was true. Many have long recovered their investments and even had to re-invest their principal including  interest earnings with a P1-million investment expected to grow to P10 million in less than two years.  Who will not be convinced? Many are putting their hard-earned money there.

I never invested. I’d rather invest my money in jewelry, land or building or time deposits in cooperatives because I know they will grow, not in hundred percentages in a few months but low but sure increase in a much longer time. I’d rather be 100-percent sure than shed rivers of tears later because I was conned and could never recover the money that I might lose. I have worked with the Regional Trial Court and up to now people are still following up on their cases against Legacy Plans with P20 billion in unpaid investments of “Double Your Money in Five Years”  long after its owner had died. The biggest of them all, the Multitel of Balajadia, victimized two million Filipinos with unpaid investment of P100 billion.

I know that these types of investments will surely fail because the interests are so outrageous because no business in the world will give you that kind of return per month. Even San Miguel Corp., with its mega-billion business, can only give at its highest twelve percent dividends on your investment for the whole year.

To regret later for a costly venture is one memory that will be very hard to erase from our frail minds.