Law enforcement officers of Turkey “revealed” another financial pyramid in the field of tourism. This time, such a popular brand as Marriott, an international hotel chain, fell victim to fraudsters, and at least 50,000 people were deceived by the name Marritt. Fraudsters worked according to the “Ponzi scheme” – in it, investors believe that they are dealing with real investments in legitimate commercial activities, but in fact they enter into a classic “pyramid”, where those who paid first receive dividends at the expense of newcomers. For Russian realities, the Ponzi scheme could should be renamed to “MMM Mavrodi scheme”.
By the way, it is possible that among the affected victims there are also our tourists, since among the detected and arrested scammers, according to Turkish media, there is a group that “sold” cheap hotel reservations in Balıkesir, and before that in Marmaris, using the timeshare method. Among them, there could well be Russians, who are massively “spudded” by scammers of this type.
Affected Turkish citizens, in turn, say that they were “led” to the Marriott brand. “The scammers lured people into the system they created with the promise of high profits using the name of the Marriott hotel, with an application called “Marriott APP”. “Hundreds of people like me thought the app was connected to the hotel and logged into their system,” experts say, citing victims. The amounts, I must say, are serious, there are those that have invested in scammers and $ 50-90 thousand, and will also be forced to pay debts on loans taken in the hope of getting rich soon.
In Marmaris, they also revealed the following scheme of scammers – they lured money from tourists under the pretext of renting hotel rooms in Istanbul, which were then allegedly supposed to be rented out to tourists for a lot of money, and the owner of the room would receive profit from this, the victims claim that it was at least 10 % of invested funds. So far, 17 victims have been found there, but the lawyer of the victims is sure that there are more.
“We are talking about a typical example of a financial pyramid. We demand that the suspects be punished and arrested at the highest level, taking legal action against them,” she said.
Recall that earlier fraud in the same way was uncovered in other Turkish resorts. In fact, the police were contacted by “deceived investors”: 30 people complained to the provincial security department on the grounds that they had been deceived with the promise of “high profits.” It was assumed that they would invest money, after which the company's employees promised to find the owners of houses and yachts with this money, rent them out to tourists through a travel agency, and distribute 10% of the profits among the “investors”. However, in fact, the scammers worked according to the “Ponzi chain” method, which is also a classic “pyramid”. Read more at this link.
Our reference: the “Ponzi chain”, named after the Italian swindler who “traded” in the States in the twenties of the last century, is in fact a classic “pyramid”. Charles Ponzi himself is a large number of investors, promising them a return of 50% or more from investing in mail coupons. However, instead of investing the money entrusted to him, Ponzi simply appropriated it for himself. The scam continued as long as Ponzi was able to attract new investors and use some of their money to pay “returns” to previous investors. In general, the scheme is kept alive by the fact that the victims are sure that the profits come from legitimate commercial activities, such as the sale of products or successful investments, and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of sustainable business as long as new investors pour in new funds and as long as the majority of investors do not demand full repayment and still believe in the non-existent assets they ostensibly own. In fact, this is a classic “pyramid”: the first investors are promised a serious percentage of profit, including by attracting new participants, and a serious advertising campaign is also being conducted to attract them. True, the “real money”, which the first investors first receive, was received at the expense of the investments of these newest participants. Sooner or later, the pyramid “collapses”, and most investors do not have time to return their funds.
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