I started noticing spam emails I was getting for TOCS, the Overnight Cash System about two weeks ago. These were coming in under the heading of emails about making money from home, click on a link to http://lynoliville.info or emails about cash gifting, click on the same link. I tried to pull up the site directly, but you can only access it from a link with an affiliate id behind it. Example: www.lynoliville.info/afilid#xxyyzz.
I kept ignoring these emails, until one came through with an excellent sales letter. I like to analyze good sales letters, so I can improve my technique, and this particular one was written particularly well. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link.
You hit the link very briefly so their servers can register you under the affiliate number you clicked to register. You are then redirected to http://www.cashwindfall4u2.com. It's a very slick landing page, where they proceeded to capture my email address, (I gave them one I direct all spam to,) name, and phone number. Not a problem. I do a lot of marketing and was prepared to hand over the information. I tried to get the IP information for this site, but had no luck.
As a web designer, I have to congratulate the people who put the site together. A crisp professional video automatically started. The audio quality caught my attention, as I've worked in broadcasting (financial end of things, but broadcasting,) for most of my life.
After I submitted the form I was sent to the Over Night Cash System - TOCS website.
Whoever was behind this had put a great deal of money and thought into the website. I skipped downloading the obligatory free gifts, and downloaded the instruction manual for this "work at home system."
I only had to read a few pages, (although I did read the whole thing,) to realize that this was a Ponzi scheme. Or, pyramid marketing at it's worst.
For those of you who have heard the phrase, but don't know what a "Ponzi" scheme refers to, there was a man named Charles Ponzi, who in the 1920's convinced wealthy investors that he could take advantage of the differences between US and foreign currencies by buying mail coupons. Ponzi only actually bought $30 in mail coupons, but he'd convinced wealthy investors that they could make a 40% return on their money in 90 days. This is compared to the 5% return on savings accounts at the time. Remember, the year was 1921, but Ponzi at one point took 1 million dollars during a 3 hour period. Some of the initial investors were paid off, to make this look as though it was actually a successful and legitimate enterprise. So any fraudulent scheme where you are promised an unrealistic rate of return in a short period of time is known as a Ponzi.
Ethically, there was no way I'd join a cash gifting scheme or the Overnight Cash System - TOCS. But I also had a pragmatic reason. Remember, I said I worked in finance? A little bit more about that later.
This particular cash gifting system works as follows; you follow your sponsor into the program, and send him, at the lowest tier, $500 dollars, in cash, by overnight delivery. Then, you solicit people into the program. They send you $500, as a gift, in cash, by overnight delivery. One of the key phrases that kept repeating in the emails was "cast your bread upon the waters and it will be returned to you tenfold."
So now, you have a pyramid scheme that ties itself into religion, is being heavily promoted, and by the number of release forms involved, has covered itself from prosecution. Why wouldn't I join? Let's look at the numbers. Let's say each person who joined recruited six people, and those six people recruited six people.
Level 01 - 6
Level 02 - 36
Level 03 - 216
Level 04 - 1,296
Level 05 - 7,776
Level 06 - 46,656
Level 07 - 279,936
Level 08 - 1,679,616
Level 09 - 10,077,696
Level 10 - 60,466,176
Level 11 - 362,797,056 - More than US Population
Level 12 - 2,176,782,336
Level 13 - 13,060,694,016 - More than World Population
http://www.sec.gov/answers/pyramid.htm, Updated 9/9/2004
Your only chance of succeeding at this is to be one of the people at the top. And they have made sure that they will rake in the cash.
In addition to the $500, which is the lowest dollar amount that you can "gift" to join the Overnight Cash System - TOCS and goes to your sponsor, they also charge a one-time $200 fee for web and marketing support. At Level 5, with $7,776 members, the originator has made $1,555,000. (7,776 people times $200 dollars minus one person, who is the originator.) 1.5 million dollars that other people have promoted for you, is not chump change. That's on top of whatever was "gifted" to him or her.
In addition, the person on top of the pile can also get a $29.95 monthly fee for a complete TOCS website of your very own. It's a cookie cutter web template, and a sub-web, hosted on their own site. Using the same level 5 number of 7,776, in one month the Overnight Cash System - TOCS, will get $232,861.25 for a template and a little bit of bandwidth.
In a year, at that level of activity, the amount of money they will make on this alone is $2,794,335. Almost 3 million dollars!
Affiliates are having a field day with this.
There are 5 tiers in the TOCS system. The beginning tier, as I said was $500 dollars. The highest tier is $10,000 dollars. Why $10 thousand? Cash gifts of over $12,500 must be reported to the IRS. The chances of someone sending your $10K in cash twice in one year is astronomically low.
I received a follow-up phone call from my "sponsor," the person whose link I clicked, about 3 hours later. It was a very short conversation. He is very persistent and I keep getting emails from him, because - gasp - their unsubscribe address doesn't work.
An additional stream of income for profiteers such as this, is to sell your email address, so that people can send you more spam.
The shame of it is, because of the state of the economy, the number of people out of work and the concept of "gifts being returned to you tenfold," a lot of naive people will join this program at whatever level they can afford. Only web savvy promoters will make their money back. Or people with a lot of friends, who they can convince to join this scheme.
The web promoters will dry up once they've reached a saturation point. The people with friends will lose them, as their friends will have no return on their dollars. Friends that they have, in effect defrauded.
Lastly, if you do an IP lookup the Overnight Cash System - TOCS, you won't find any information for it, so the owner's information is private. I managed to track down the website to a hosting company in Panama. Good look on getting any of your "cash gifting" money back.
I just invest my money in Swiss chocolates. At least these do some good when they disappear.
