Warning: Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme Operating in Australia
Last night I attended a Meetup in Sydney hosted by “Learn to Earn and Grow Bitcoin”. The organizers claimed that they would teach attendees how to turn $2000 of BTC into $13000 of BTC in one year.
Due to me being greedy and liking Bitcoin I signed up for the Meetup to see what it was all about.
The Meetup was held in the back room of a pub. When I entered the room, I was greeted by a young lady who asked me for my name. When I said “Chris”, she wrote “Chris” down on a sticker and handed it to me. I understood I was supposed to stick this sticker onto my t-shirt - which I did.
Upon taking a seat in the furthest chair I could find from the stage area, I looked up and saw a TV screen that read: “USI Tech - Transform Your Life.”
I was overcome with a sense that something wasn’t quite right and quickly googled “USI Tech”. The Google results confirmed what I feared - I was at a pyramid marketing ponzi scam Tupperware meeting.
What is USI Tech?
USI Tech is some type of Forex auto-trading software company that decided branch out into the crypto world promising their customer's very attractive returns.
USI Tech has terrible online reviews. The internet is littered with red flags warning everyone that this is a scam. However, not having much else to do, I decided to stick around to hear what the organizers had to say.
The Organisers of “Learn to Earn and Grow Bitcoin”
The Meetup was hosted by a husband and wife team called Lucy and Bruce. I don’t know if Lucy and Bruce are scammers or if they truly believe USI Tech is a legitimate business. However, my spider senses leaned on the former.
During the Meetup, Lucy and Bruce gave a talk with the aid of a power point presentation. The talk involved going over the basics of Bitcoin, how USI works, and other stuff I didn’t stick around for.
One of the problems was that neither Lucy or Bruce seemed to have a clue about Bitcoin. The information they gave in their talk on Bitcoin was mostly incorrect. Anybody with a basic knowledge of Crypto would have been able to tell that these people were completely ignorant on the topic of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
They provided no opinion on the upcoming or previous hard fork - or how the hard fork will affect the USI trading strategy. I found this alarming, however, they said that Bitcoin is going to rise in the coming years because Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet said so. I guess that’s true.
The Organisers’ Pitch
After they told us Bitcoin is secret computer money that will rise in value because Warren Buffet said so, they told us that we could achieve a return of 1% per day by giving our Bitcoins to USI Tech to trade.
The way this worked is that we would buy “packets.” Each packet was worth $75AUD worth of Bitcoins. The packets lasted for 140days. In that 140days the packets added 1% per day to their Bitcoin value. At the end of the 140days, the packets would expire and the Bitcoin would be returned to us.
Of course, Lucy and Bruce would receive affiliate commissions for every packet we bought. We could also become affiliates and get paid commissions from people we referred to USI Tech and those people could become affiliates and refer others to USI and so on and so forth in the shape of a pyramid.
The Obvious Issues
- The “packets” reek of Ponzi scheme. There is simply no other way for USI Tech to achieve those kinds of returns.
- There is an obvious danger exchanging real Bitcoin for USI Tech “packets.” USI Tech, at any time they wish, could run off with all the Bitcoins leaving everyone holding worthless “packets”. I am 99.9999% sure this is exactly what is going to happen in the very near future.
Conclusion
If you hear anything about USI Tech or cross paths with Lucy and Bruce from “Learn to Earn and Grow Bitcoin” I would advise you to stay far far away.
This sounds a little bit like USI Tech might have partnered with BitConnect.
Easy money there to take investors money, chuck it in BitConnect and take a commission. When BitConnect goes down it'll leave a LOT of bag holders, but the model and pitch seems very similar. Have a read of BitConnect and let us know if there is any shared material?
Had a quick look at Bitconnect. Seems very similar. "Give us your Bitcoin and we will give you unrealistic returns." The only difference is, I read that Bitconnect is "lending" your Bitcoins, whereas USI Tech claim to be "Trading" your Bitcoins.
Very interesting. It may be a different venture or they may just be playing with semantics.
I know it hasn't happened yet, but I already feel sorry for the poor saps who will be left holding the bag when the inevitable occurs.
Hopefully this page comes up for the next poor sucker googling the name from an uncomfortable chair near the back.
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Dude this is super informative and awesome information that will help tons of people here ! I'm sure you'll have success ! Keep on posting awesome content !
Thanks for the perfect post! @christosthegreek
Very worthwhile post! There sure are some con artists out there.
I hate the way these things spread, I swear I spend a good amount of time ducking and weaving these kind of scammers. At the moment it is the cult of isagenix
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STOPWhere in Sydney was this ? Also be aware of scammers that claim to give great returns on " copy trades " or shadow trades whatever you call them ..most of these firms are investment firms