Affinity Fraud and Ponzi Schemes: Everything You Need to Get Started

With various reports coming in of different people in the Christian community being victimized by Ponzi schemes and Affinity Fraud, we figured, ‘hey, if you can’t beat them, join them.’    Here’s an inventory checklist of the kind of person you need to be and the devices that need to be in your toolkit:

Powerfully Persuasive – It helps if you can really ‘sell’ people on your ideas; if you have a proven track record of being able to convince people to get on board a project or event.   Take good salesmanship and mix in a dash of charm.

Outrageous Claims – If the banks are only offering 2-3% and the investment brokers are only suggesting returns of 4-8%, don’t offer 12% or 14%;  go big — around 20%.   What difference does it make if you’re not going to be paying anybody anyways?

Self Delusion – If you believe in the project enough, you can do more than just project a genuine sincerity, you can possibly even fool a polygraph machine.   This is where the eternal optimists have a distinct advantage over the rest of us.

Pathological Lying – You won’t get this gift overnight, so start soon.   My wife recently dealt with a couple who came up with four different stories in five minutes as to someone’s whereabouts; so I suppose it’s good to get your story straight ahead of time.

Criminal Intent – This is where it gets nasty.   You’ll need to start small and work up to what we’re describing here.    This might be a good day to start with a CD or some lipstick at WalMart and then if petty theivery works for you, set your sights on bigger game.

Spiritual Spin – Once you’ve arrived at your moment of triumph and you’re out selling the actual scheme, be sure to mention how this investment program is “God’s instrument,” how it will “benefit the Kingdom,” and if possible credit God with “revealing this method and opportunity” to you.

Critical Mass – The first few may be tougher sells, but once you’ve got a few people on board, the word will spread.    Be sure to allow some of your earlier investors to actually get their hands on some cash returns, so they can fully buy in to the self delusion; they may not be as good at this as you.

You’re now ready to begin. Come up with a good name for your project so that it sounds credible, and make sure your laptop computer has enough charts and graphs; they can be based on anything statistical since no one caught up in this is going to look that closely.