Pyramid scam
Ever been the victim of a pyramid scam thing?
I have, and so have most of my family.

We were conned to the tune of around £300K.

We're not a wealthy family, so before you get ideas about me.
My family did alright and had a couple of companies that they sold, had some spare capital, and a well trusted and long standing family friend comes along and says to my parents "how about I invest your money for you", now i was a lot younger and stupider than i am today, so none of that seemed out of the ordinary.
Not long before this happened a relative i'd grown to know better in the last six months of his life died and left his house to me and my brother, we had no use for it, had debts to pay, college etc, so we took it under good advice to sell the property.
Four weeks before he died, he changed his will into mine and my brothers favour due to a long running family dispute, and cut both my parents out of the will.
We sold his house a few months later, and after paying off the funeral, mortgage etc we were left ith around £75k each, which was nice.
Quids in i thought!
Oh no.

Our family insisted that we invest it with them since the money should have been theirs in the will anyway.
I didn't agree with this and was punished by being thrown out of my parents house (but with £75k in the bank), my brother had a girlfriend to go live with so he was ok.
Of course i came back with tail between legs and handed over £65k, after having bought lots of shiny things, as you do.
I also trusted this investor/ family friend person to invest the other £8k that was left by my grandmother 3 years previously.
Again done on the advice of the family.
We were given all sorts of projections by this man as to what sort of returns on our money we could expect.
Being naive is great, rose tinted glasses and all that.

Back then i could have bought a house with a small mortgage and be laughing due to the market prices now, and have a foot on the property ladder.

Anyway, so in total we'd cleverly (or so we thought) invested close to or over 300 grand, and all of a sudden we're told that the money has been frozen by the american banks due to 9/11 etc etc etc bullshit essentially.
And that's where it all really started to wrong.
We'd lost the lot, and the pressure I was put under at the time to invest the money by my parents makes me resent them even to this day, as my wife and i now could be so much better off and living better than we are now.

For me this has left a bitter taste in my mouth ever since 2001, and I won't give a single penny over to charity or waste my money on the tv (phone scam) competitions, however....I play the lottery because I love the irony.

Sorry for the long read, and all advice welcome.

Length? As long as seven years.
(Temper, Wed 24 Oct 2007, 23:22, 6 replies)

Christ,
was he FSA registered?
( sprinkles ITS AN ISLAND, morron, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 3:43, closed)

damn..
holy crap that sucks.

I was kind of in the same boat.. only to the tune of $10g however. Stupid parents with their guilt trips.
(Sammyj, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 3:55, closed)

Hmm
I had no idea being an absolute dumbfuck was hereditary.
(Leyxia, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 7:00, closed)

Leyxia
You really are a vicious cunt, aren't you?

Temper made some mistakes that are obvious to us now - and, I don't doubt - to Temper as well. From the story, it looks like all his actions were in good faith and for admirable reasons. I don't know whether I'd have done exactly the same, but I might well have done something appreciably similar. The same probably applies to most people: decent people fall for scams because decency can switch off critical antennae.

Maybe you never fall for scams. But you've already demonstrated amply well that you're not really a decent person, so that makes sense...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 9:33, closed)

^This
Oh, all of this.

I've said it before, Leyxia, and I'll say it again. You're clearly some kind of socially retarded snivelling little shitstain who somehow thinks that they are oh-so-clever because they scam people on e-bay and are holier-than thou when it comes to actual stories that are meaningful like this one.

If anything's hereditary, I'd take a long, close look at your family. If they managed to spawn such a long streak of piss as you, I can only imagine what they must be like. So please, once again, fuck off. Far, far away.

Temper - That's a tragic story mate. Family - who'd have 'em? And besides what that idiot Leyxia thinks, there's nothing you could have done.
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 10:11, closed)

There's plenty you could've done
Not trusted someone with a shitload of your money, grown a spine, had an original thought instead of following your equally stupid parents?

Hell, even if you trust the bloke, how about some follow ups to where your cash is? You know, proof, paper? Official forms?
NAHHHH.

Moron. People like you don't deserve the cash anyway.
(Leyxia, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 10:24, closed)