Affinity Fraud…

Finally – a term for how these scams are able to operate, defying good sense and logic.

It’s called “affinity fraud”.

Here is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s definition of affinity fraud:

Affinity fraud refers to investment scams that prey upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, the elderly, or professional groups. The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are – or pretend to be – members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme, by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster’s ruse.

You can read more about affinity fraud by clicking the link to the SEC site above.

MadeBig and Transcend Marketing International Inc. are examples of this type of fraud. Think back to 2006 when the MadeBig “shopping site” was being hocked by your friends, family, people in your community – and now how many are still involved or have anything good to say about it? Certainly a few have stayed with the scheme over the years as it changed format but the vast majority have quit since 2006 – finally realizing they had been conned.

Affinity fraud was featured in an NBC ‘Dateline’ story which ran last month, entitled “Too Good to be True”. The amounts lost and the sheer scale of the fraud by far eclipsed anything Richi Roane or TMII have ever achieved but the story was similar and the methods the same.

Although ‘Dateline’ gave the story a lot of exposure, the story had been featured in various media outlets as the perpetrators of the fraud were being prosecuted. So large was the fraud that the FBI and the SEC investigated and prosecuted the three ring leaders, securing stiff sentences for the fraudsters.

What caught my eye especially was the way that peoples’ faith had been taken advantage of – talk of using the profits (which never existed for the investors of course) for good causes. It appears that church groups and other good folk make very easy targets for such fraudsters and history has shown that Richi Roane’s TMII are no strangers to targeting these groups and taking full advantage of their trust.

In the Dateline (Tri-Energy) scam story, the scam was spread among Mormons who were often acting in good faith and believing it could only be good. Unfortunately, they had unwittingly joined with people out to deceive them and fleece them for as much money as they possibly could – with the vague possibility they could pay them some kind of return or dividend, as new members joined – effectively a good old Ponzi scheme.

If you didn’t catch the show and haven’t read the story, it makes for an interesting read and you will likely draw parallels to the MadeBig scam, as I did.

About Admin

This site was created to provide a permanent location for documents, videos and audio related to the pyramid scheme Madebig.com, run by Richi Roane's Transcend Marketing International, Inc. It allows the general public to hear Roane himself and his Presidential Leaders make promises they never intended to keep. With this knowledge, the general public will hopefully choose not to invest in Roane's pyramid schemes, whatever format they take as the Madebig.com site changes direction on average every 18 months.