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Old 11-30-2009, 04:21 AM
Yuliya Mironova's Avatar
Yuliya Mironova Yuliya Mironova is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Saint Petersburg, Russia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by axelnobel View Post
Cash gifting is just cash exchanging hands, without a product involved.
Actually it's a little more complicated than that, I'm afraid.

Some of the more recent prosecutions against promoters of cash gifting schemes have - paradoxically? - involved schemes that DO have a product involved. (In others words, they pretend not to be cash gifting).

The "products", though, have been either "instruction manuals on how to run the business" or digitally downloaded "products" of which the companies, when hauled up in court, have been unable to justify the value or demonstrate that the sales have been to genuine retail customers not joining the "business".

So it's murky, not as clearcut as one would like.

These things often have "pretend products". But when they're not products of real value which retail customers buy, and/or when people's joining fees are being used toward commission payments of earlier members of the scheme, something is wrong. And it seems courts and regulators are getting a little quicker and more efficient both at seeing through that, now, and at doing something about it. Which is good, anyway, even if it's still kind of "too little, too late".
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