I remember the story of a man named "Bernard Madoff " who was confirmed to be sentenced to up to 150 years in prison and the reason for the jail term was because he swindled investors with a scam that was worth $50 million. , it was said that alot of people even lost their life savings to his ponzi scheme..
Many people have lost all their life to ponzi schemes and some are still battling with the after-effects of losing all their savings because they got involved with ponzi schemes..
I believe that here are some quick tips that you can use to be able to at least prevent yourself from any investment fraud.
Before we engage in any investment we should have the habit of making use of a trusted financial advisors.., this will involve the use of having a well conducted research on the individual's credentials, their past investment history and also their accreditation too.
We need to ensure that the individuals are truly certified by the Financial Planning Association depending on the country where they are located.., we need to confirm that their investment company is registered and regulated and reliable.
We should always do our research before investing and we should examine the full operations of the organization that we want to invest with, we have to also ensure that they are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission...
Following our instincts before investing can also help us alot , some of us when we hear about a certain kind of investments we already know that it sounds too risky and unrealistic but we refuse to follow our instincts and then we later invest on it and then realize that we invested on a ponzi scheme and it is too late before we realize it..
When our instincts are sending signals to us that the investment idea sounds scammy then we should follow our instincts and avoid such investments..
Let me also mention greed too, infact I will not forgive myself if I do not mention greed in this post, greed is the major factor that makes it easy to push people into investing into ponzi schemes , infact greed is the easiest tool that the ponzi operators use to trap investors into the schemes.
They know that greed is a factor that motivates alot of people to invest on ponzi scheme so that is why they will promise very huge returns on whatever you invest with them, they know that those very huge promises will relate well with the greedy mindset and will make it easier to capture the heart of the greedy person and make them to have interest on the ponzi scheme..
You cannot avoid ponzi scheme if you continue to remain greedy, there are thousands of ponzi schemes all over the world and they will keep cashing out if people continue to be very greedy..
The more the greed spreads in our society , the more the investments scams will continue to be successful.
So we need to run away from Greed if we want to avoid losing our money to ponzi schemes..