pyramid scheme

pyramid scheme, fraudulent business model that seeks to funnel revenue from recruited members to the scheme’s organizers by promising payments to members for recruiting new participants. Although pyramid schemes promise large, quick returns, they inevitably fail, causing most members to lose their investments. The word pyramid reflects the model’s structure—a leader or small group of organizers at the top of the scheme and an increasingly broad base of members below them. Forming or recruiting for pyramid schemes is illegal in the United States and in many other countries and jurisdictions.

A Ponzi scheme is a type of pyramid scheme that pays investment returns to an initial group of investors through funds secured from investors who join later. In contrast, multilevel marketing (MLM) models (also called network marketing) differ from pyramid and Ponzi schemes in that members make money primarily through the sale of actual goods and services and not from recruiting new participants.

How a pyramid scheme works

A pyramid scheme is initiated by an operator or a small group who offers members an opportunity to take part in an effort that will provide them with substantial income. Members must pay a fee to join the scheme, and the operators of the organization take in all or a large percentage of each member’s fee.

Members are told they can earn money by recruiting other members and, in some cases, by selling products. The organizers promote the illusion of an ever-increasing flow of income to current members derived from each new level of members recruited. In some schemes, current members may receive a so-called commission from new member fees; however, most of the money goes to the organizers. The scheme’s commission agreements are usually complex and tend to focus more on recruiting than on revenues from sales. In addition, any products or services offered by the organization rarely have any market value. The only real revenue comes from new members’ fees or from the organizers asking current members for more money while promising members additional future revenue.

Pyramid schemes quickly become unsustainable, because they are based on the principle of exponential growth (a condition characterized by rapid growth at an increasing rate). For example, a scheme may start out with 10 members. Each member is required to recruit five new members, which means the second level of membership will have 50 participants. Each member of the second level is required to recruit 5 new people, which expands the third level to 250 participants, each of whom must recruit five people, and so on.

As long as the scheme lasts, its organizers enjoy a steady flow of income. However, recruits at middle and lower tiers soon become disillusioned by the unrelenting need to keep adding new members and by the lack of financial returns that were promised. As members stop participating, the pyramid begins to collapse, and most of the members below the top rows lose the money they have invested.

Ponzi schemes

Ponzi schemes pose as investment opportunities that promise investors steady, high-yield returns. Instead, early investors are simply paid with the revenues that come from those who join the scheme later. As in a pyramid scheme, when the number of investors exceeds the founder’s ability to pay them, the Ponzi scheme collapses. American investment manager Bernie Madoff was the most famous Ponzi scheme executor in U.S. history. His scam cost investors an estimated $50–65 billion and wiped out many of the participants’ life savings. In 2009 he pleaded guilty to 11 charges of fraud and money laundering, and he was later sentenced to 150 years in prison.

Multilevel marketing

MLM can be a legitimate business model whose structure superficially resembles that of a pyramid scheme; however, some models are illegal pyramid schemes disguised as MLM businesses. Legitimate MLM businesses, such as the American direct-marketing companies Amway and Avon Products, involve selling products or services to acquaintances and family members and recruiting new members to do the same.