Get Rich Quick?

Is it possible to get rich quickly?

I can think of several ways to get rich quickly. Rob a bank, set up a pyramid or Ponzi scheme or start dealing drugs. They’ll all make you some money very quickly. Of course the link between all of these things is that you’ll almost certainly end up either in a prison cell or a coffin quite soon afterwards so they’re probably not the best choices.

You could also set up a Get Rich Quick Scheme. There’s certainly no shortage of inspiration. Just visit Facebook and you’ll very quickly find a huge number of them popping up in various groups making some remarkable promises. I saw these in just a few minutes.

“Learn how to generate income worldwide. Do you know that cellphone can be the way of income? Yes, it is. using the new mobile phone system you can earn $5,000 weekly and it is available worldwide. 100% money back guarantee. 100% safe. 100% secure”

“Let's Have a Passive Income. Many members receive thausands dollar per month. Only just $50 potentially receive passive income up to $8,847 per month. Earn Up To $8191 Without Having to refer a single person. In two hours per day you are able to earn $ 2K - $ 5K per week. Remember, everyone who joins will make money!”

“I discovered a programme which claimed to generate a passive income with no risk and very little work.... Yeah, right! Rather sceptically I tried it and the results took me by surprise. They were telling the truth. When I saw the system actually working, I knew I’d found something special.”

Here’s a suggestion about what you should do whenever you read claims like these. Ask yourself a simple question. How does the person posting the message gain from telling you about this scheme? Surely if he or she has discovered a wonderful way of making money they should just use the scheme themselves? Why do they want to recruit other people into the scheme? Is it perhaps because the way to make money from the scheme is actually about recruitment rather than products?

In fact that’s the real truth. These schemes don’t make money by selling products or services, the only real source of income is the recruitment of other people. There is, of course, no scheme in the world in which you can earn “$ 2K - $ 5K per week” by working “two hours per day”. It’s nothing more than a lie and a scam to get you to cough up money.

It’s the same with forex trading schemes like XForex whose marketers make ridiculous and fictitious claims like “Mr.Baruti From Botswana Has Made $5024 From EUR/USD Trading Last Month! It Is So Easy To Make A Second Income! Take Your First Step In To a Wealthier Future!”

This is all lies. Only the tiniest proportion of individuals make any money from forex trading. The only winners from the forex business are the enormous companies with billions to gamble and the companies that try and persuade you that you can do the same. Everyone else loses.

It’s the same with the companies that say they’ll train you on how to make fortunes from stock market trading. You’ll remember Stock Market Direct who a few years ran a business in Gaborone offering exactly these “services”. They collapsed when the money ran dry and their leader, the mythical “Tony Samuels” skipped the country with millions of “investors” money, never to be seen again. I say mythical because although there was a human being in a shiny suit running the business he certainly wasn’t called Tony Samuels, his identity was as fake as the profits his company promised.

Last week my favourite regulator, NBFIRA, issued a public warning about another company operating along the same lines, this time called “Go Direct Stock Market Investment (Botswana) (Pty) Ltd” (GDSMI). NBFIRA’s warning said that they had investigated GDSMI and reported that: “GDSMI has not been registered, licensed, approved and or endorsed by NBFIRA to operate” and that they warned the public that “GDSMI is not licensed by NBFIRA to take any funds on behalf of the clients.

They concluded by advising the public “to undertake its own due diligence before investing with any Non-Bank Financial Institution” like GDSMI and to contact NBFIRA before making any investment decisions.

Wise words. To their credit NBFIRA were one of the few entities warning people about the Eurextrade Ponzi scheme but that didn’t stop many, many people losing fortunes in that scam. I’ve heard of endless people investing what little they had and losing it all and of other more affluent victims who cashed in savings and pension schemes, even some who sold property to hand it over to Eurextrade. Just last week I heard about a victim who “sold two houses and a Range Rover” and gave it all to the criminals who are no doubt now sitting on a yacht somewhere laughing at their gullible victims.

I think we all know that there are no genuine Get Rick Quick Schemes, don’t we? Unless you inherit wealth, or you discover oil in your back yard, the only way to make some money in life is using hard work, imagination and persistence. People who promise you an “opportunity” to become wealthy with very little work are either liars, thieves or insane. Or any combination of those three things.

So if you see such an advertisement on Facebook or elsewhere please report it to Facebook as spam and pass straight on. Then you can join the rest of us who are trying to make money the old-fashioned and proven way.