Money pit

This is about greed. There are rich and educated people who also fall victim to these scams.”

This was how Sen. Sergio Osmeña III, chairman of the Senate committee on banks and financial institutions, explained why scores of people fell victim to the latest pyramiding scam in the country, this time perpetrated by Aman Futures Corp.

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), this pyramiding scheme is even bigger than that perpetrated by the Legacy Group, victimizing 15,000 investors of their hard-earned cash worth P12 billion.

The two scams are practically the same—The “double your money back” setup in which the investor is promised an unrealistic rate of return of investment (ROI), (as high as 70 percent), a guarantee that Osmeña says should already alarm a  prudent investor. “Seventy percent a month is too much,” he said.

The  scheme appeals to the universal “get rich quick” attitude and it  is the rich and educated people who perpetuate the game using their funds and names  to convince smaller investors to pour their hard-earned savings into their bank accounts.

Thus the teacher who was hospitalized after losing hundreds of thousands of her retirement benefits, along with another victim who supposedly robbed an LBC  office  to recover the money he lost in the Aman scam.

Interior and Local Governments Secretary Mar Roxas spearheads  the investigation  along with the Department of Justice.  Could this be related to the report that wife, broadcaster Korina Sanchez, was among those victimized by the Legacy scam a year ago?

Why  moneyed people would take a chance on a pyramid schemes when they could easily invest in the stock market— which has its own risks but at least is legal and beneficial to the economy—only they can answer.

They remain potent tools for scammers who make money off small fry, wage earners who would take a risk not because they’re greedy but because they desperately want to improve their lot in life.

Stricter regulations and a crackdown to identify, arrest and charge these perpetrators in court remain the order of the day.

More than that, the public needs to be alerted early  about  potential pyramid schemes.

The alert posted online by the Securities and Exchange Commission in August  did not identify Aman Futures.

It referred to “reports that a firm operating in Pagadian City, offers securities to the public with  a promise of ‘double your money’ for the investment made.”

It cautioned the public to be “over-cautious “ in investing money “in what appears to be high yield-high risk investment which may turn out to be a fraudulent scheme.”

How many read that warning?