A Pyramid Scam, m-Commerce style

Scheme, Scam, Spam — they all sound the same.

I’m used to deleting spam from my public hotmail email box. But one email caught my attention:

Sender: *e** **o**
Subject: Earn W/ Your G-Cash & Smart Money Account

The subject caught my attention not because of the promise of “quick cash” but because G-Cash and Smart Money are among my fields of study and consultancy.

I investigated further and found myself browsing through a 17 page PDF file. The “eBook” was screaming with all caps, colored fonts and so many exclamation points that my blood pressure went up!

I didn’t have the time to read the fine print. But with all that I had browsed through, I still didn’t find the legitimate business model.

I sent a reply and told the sender that I’m both interested and skeptical.

He replied quickly (less than half an hour) saying he too was skeptical at first. But he continued to explain that he started to believe in the money-making system when cash (G-Cash and Smart Money) was flowing into his cellphones.

I sent a second reply with excerpts copied below:

Hi *e**,
Basically, my question is: Where does the money come from?

And so far, the answer I have found is: The money comes from new members.

If you could point out otherwise, I would like to hear it.

Normally, I just trash this kind of email. But this concerns my area of study (m-commerce, I’m sure you’ve found that out through my blog) and it is coming from a fellow IT professional, thus I am not dismissing it too
easily.

My interest is to understand.

Thanks and peace,

Edwin

Scammers, your replies are welcome

Now, after more than 24 hours, I still haven’t heard from him.

For anybody interested in examining the scheme further, here is their URL (http : / / mobilecashphilippines . com) . You’ll find a sample of the ebook there. I do not want to promote their site from Pinoy.Tech.Blog. What I want is to open this up to the public to promote awareness of this get rich quick scam.

Jepoy, an online friend, took the initiative of looking into their website. He has additional information on his blog.

I declare that this is a scam. There is no real value created. The “earning” model is based only on the registration fee of “new members” going to older members. The only way to earn is to recruit more members and collect joining fees from them. There aren’t any real products or services of any value to warrant the payment of the joining fee.

If anyone behind the scheme would like to argue otherwise, I would like to hear it. Somewhere out there, there is a person(s) creating “ebooks” that new members send out to more prospect members. This is the person responsible for promoting this scam.

Bad for m-Commerce

Sad thing about this is: the scheme can paint a bad picture of m-Commerce.

m-Commerce users beware! I also hope that Smart, Globe, the SEC, NTC investigate this further to determine it’s legitimacy/non-legitimacy and shut it down if that is what is right.

I’m sending an email to ntc@ntc.gov.ph and ospac@ntc.ph . I found these email address on the papers last Sunday — “Text Hoaxers Watch Out … You’ll get disconnected”.

Who would like to help bring this to the attention of the appropriate agencies/organizations?

ka edong

Read:
Transcripts of the email exchange
m-Commerce: Pyramid Scheme?
Jepoy’s MLM on Mobile