The US watchdog, the Securities Exchange Commission, announced its intention to clamp down and virtually shut out a $600 million Ponzi scheme called ZeekRewards. Will our regulators and law enforcers learn?

United States market watchdog, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), announced its intention to clamp down and virtually shut out a $600 million Ponzi scheme called ZeekRewards. Such proactive action is rarely taken by the US regulators and law enforcers. Stephen Cohen, an associate director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement said, “ZeekRewards misused the power of the Internet and lured investors by making them believe they were getting an opportunity to cash in on the next big thing. In reality, their cash was just going to the earlier investor”.

According to the SEC press release, it is believed that Paul Burks, the founder of ZeekRewards, has agreed to settle the SEC’s charges against him without admitting or denying the allegations, and agreed to cooperate with a court-appointed receiver. Burks has agreed to relinquish his interest in the company and its assets plus pay a $4 million penalty. Additionally, the court has appointed a receiver to collect, marshal, manage and distribute remaining assets for return to harmed investors.

The premise of the scheme was to recruit investors or “qualified affiliates”. Qualified affiliates have no role in the organisation except to recruit more helpless individuals and sign up as investors or qualified affiliates”. It is alleged that Burks withdrew approximately $11 million of investors’ (qualified affiliates) money and distributed $1 million to family members. According to SEC’s court complaint, which seeks to shut down the company, ZeekRewards employs a pyramid ‘Matrix’ to reward its investors for recruiting others to join the scheme. The company places each newly recruited affiliate into a “2x5 forced-fill matrix,” which is a multi-level marketing pyramid with 63 positions that pools new investors’ money. Basically, the success of the scheme depends how many people are ‘recruited’. These are the classic makings of the Ponzi and multi-level marketing scheme.

At some point of time, there will be far too many investors, or too few new investors to ‘pay’ the older ones, to sustain the pyramid scheme and is bound to collapse. And this is precisely what SEC thinks will happen. It said in the complaint, “ZeekRewards” current investor payouts are approaching, and may soon exceed, total incoming revenue. In July 2012, total revenue for ZeekRewards was approximately $162 million, while total investor cash pay-outs were approximately $160 million. Further more, it is believed that owners of ZeekRewards hold approximately $225 million in investor funds in approximately 15 financial institutions. These funds are in danger of rapid depletion. What is more pertinent is that vast majority of the funds are being held by payment processors as reserves against potential credit card “charge-backs”.

Ponzi Schemes are nothing new to the world. Their recurrence keeps happening, often right below regulators’ noses, especially in India. We, at Moneylife, had written about it at length and recently over here: (http://moneylife.in/article/mlms-now-want-to-invest-money-in-india-really/27968.html). Will our regulators and law enforcers take notice?