In 1996 I purchased my first computer. In the beginning I was quite interested in the social media aspect of the Internet. I joined America Online (AOL) and was completely fascinated with the various chat rooms available there. After a few months my new shiny adventure had lost its luster and I began to look at other areas of the Internet. What I found was simply amazing! There were many people making big money from this Internet thing and I wanted to be one of them.
I found many websites depicting people in front of large beautiful mansions, driving luxury cars and sailing their luxury yachts. Some of them even had private jet planes. My heart raced at the thought that I could do this also. The people on these sites were telling their rags to riches stories about how they seemingly became millionaires overnight. Nearly all of them said they wanted to help as many people as they could to do the same. I was intrigued to say the least. I honestly had never been so excited. I just knew that I was going to be rich.
I had always been an honest man and believed that most other people were honest as well. I was very trusting, so much so that I was very willing to open my wallet and use my credit card to get these people to help me make big money. It was effortless spending. I really thought of it as an investment that would make me very wealthy. This was something that was going to make all my dreams come true and I would finally be living the good life that I felt I always deserved.
I even joined some programs that promised multiple streams of income. I thought, why not? The more income, the better.......right? Well, as my luck would have it, after paying my hard earned money I found that nearly all of these offers were only scams created by guru's who wanted to take me for my money.......and they did! Boy did they, because I didn't stop here, I just kept on going. I joined every brand new shiny object I saw while spending hundreds and thousands of dollars I didn't have to spend. I got my self into a big rut and am to this day trying to dig myself out.
The last big program I joined, ( I won't mention it's name) the owner was online doing a webinar daily. I attended his webinar almost everyday for about a month. He seemed so honest and transparent. He had come up with the ultimate solution to everyone's problem, Guaranteed Signups. Yes, this meant that if you joined with him you would not have to recruit your own people, you could just buy them and he would put them under you which would eventually build your online business and make you a lot of money. I was so excited I nearly pissed my pants. I can tell you this, after I joined, I was so excited I could barely sleep. I became very active in this program working between 12 and 20 hours per day, 7 days a week. I never worked less than 12 hours per day. Even though I never had to recruit a single soul, I went to work promoting this guy and his program and soon I had recruited over 20 new people. Now these people I recruited didn't go to me, they went to other people who were buying their recruits just as I was.
Then came the day of the webinar where the owner announced that two of his top leading guys in the company had purchased over 260 recruits each for their own downlines. Since all purchases were time/date stamped, this meant that no one who purchased their own recruits after these two guys would be getting any recruits for a very long time. It was a very long time indeed because after they did this no one was getting any recruits. It was truly a sad day for many people who were counting on this to work for them, including me.
We complained, but it didn't do any good. The man that I thought was so honest and transparent had cheated us all. He took in a little over $750,000.00 in less than 6 months and then he and his wife began travelling the world. He even videod it for us all to see. I was truly upset and dismayed by this man and his infinite lying. Of course this story is only part of the entire story, but time and space would never permit me to publish the entire story in this forum.
The moral of this story is that if you pay attention to scammers long enough, you will certainly lose your religion! That's right, all your hopes, dreams and trust in people will fly right out the window. Be careful when joining online programs and remember this question: How much money will the last person who joins any MLM business make ? The answer should deter you from joining anyone without thoroughly researching and examining the program/product or service prior to getting involved.
Beautiful post
This all boils down to a single statement - "Trust, but verify."
If you have the ability to trust, then make sure what you're getting involved with is truly what they say it is.
Pressure to make immediate judgements are suspect. So is any statements like "I'll never steal from you" or "Trust me... because...".
Most people don't have to qualify themselves immediately using those statements. That should be a red flag right there.
In any case, anything that promises a large return in a short period of time should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.
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