Subject: Re: I JUST COULD NOT BELIEVE IT!!!! - believe.txt [1/1]

From: [email-masked] (Joel Rubin)
Date: 27 Mar 1996 17:25:16 GMT

A pyramid scam is a scheme, like the chain letter to which I am responding, 
where a person sends money to several other people in the hope that more 
people will send money to him in the hope that more people will send money to 
them...

"Amway" and at least some other Multi-Level Marketing organizations are NOT 
pyramid scams. They actually sell something (e.g. laundry detergent) which 
you might buy outside the context of the scheme.

In a pure pyramid scam, no merchandise of actual value changes hands. There 
may be mailing lists or reports or books about "How I made one million 
dollars at this scam" or something like that.

As your money allegedly grows exponentially in a pyramid scam, so do the 
number of required participants. There are about five to the fourteenth 
people in the world, most of whom are in no position to take part in the 
scam. So, very quickly, you run out of participants. Only the shills at the 
very top of the pyramid make any significant ammount of money.

It is a violation of Title 18 U.S. Code Section 1302 to send the money for a 
chain letter through the U.S. Mails. Canadians may not participate in or 
promote a "pyramid selling scheme" under Part VI, Section 55.1 of the 
Canadian criminal code. Other countries have similar laws.

For an official U.S. blurb, check out

http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm

It is also not a very good idea to post a chain letter on the net. You have 
to give your real name and address to get any of the money. If I were a 
scamster, I would love to have a nice list of people who had fallen for one 
scam, in the hope that maybe I could send them "How to Make Big Money in the 
New South Wales Lottery--just send $50 to scam central in the Phillipines" or 
"How to Make Big Money Investing in Land that is only 100 km away from the 
nearest source of water".