Over the last few months, I’ve been receiving a lot of spam about alleged investment programs which claimed to be paying upwards of 5% rate of return every hour. There’s no real investment which could ever possible pay this rate of return, it had to be a scam, but I wasn’t quite sure how it was a scam. I went to the webpage to check it out, and apparently you could pay with eGold, and then you would earn 4% an hour on your money. I did a little bit of research, and what I found out, was not very suprising.Essentially, these high yield investment programs (HYIP) purport themselves to be an investment program which accepts investments as low as $1.00 while offering extremely high rates of return.
As of yet, there has been no HYIP which has survived for any amount of time without turning out to be fraudulent. 95% of these times HYIPs are nothing more than a good old fashioned Ponzi scheme. New investors in the program will provide cash to pay for the profits of the existing investors, who then withdraw their money. All the people who are going to fall for it fall for it, and then the people at the bottom end up losing their money.
High Yield Investment Programs have become very easy to exist on the internet because of electronic currencies which can be traded across international borders. These HYIPs usually invest INTGold, e-gold, and e-bullion.
Generally these programs are advertised in some of the shadier means available on the internet, such as SPAM email and instant messages. They are also advertised in forums, on mailing lists, and sometimes make use of Google’s AdWords program. You will see a lot of spam for these programs because people are usually given a commission for referring new people that they place in the program.
Generally HYIPs do next to nothing to give out any details about who manages the program, the location it operates from, or any information about how the money is invested. This is done to protect the person who is operating the scam. Usually they will offer vague descriptions as to where the money is invested, or attempt to make an appeal based on emotion which suggests they will allow investors to achieve financial freedom
If you get one of these emails or see one of these messages on a forum, your best bet is to ignore it entirely, and pretend you never read it. These programs just never pan out and are not worth your while.