GET-rich-quick schemes spring up with recurring regularity. But though each may differ slightly from ones that have arisen before, they all have one essential factor in common -- the mugs who fall for them.

Yet, despite logic and common sense saying that, ultimately, any something-for-nothing scheme is based on nonsense and will collapse before long, people do continue to be taken in.

Why? It is because of that old human instinct called greed.

The devisers of these schemes play upon it -- and the gullibility of those whose judgment is clouded by foolish assumptions that they can quickly multiply the money they invest.

What is much more likely is that, as trading standards officials in Lancashire were warning today as another pyramid scheme emerges, most end up as losers.

And they stand to do so to some tune -- when recruits are being asked for a stake of up to £3,000 to join. That is a lot of hard-earned money to risk on the hope that endless others can be enlisted to send riches flowing down the chain of members.

The upshot always is that the chain snaps, leaving most people out of pocket and with the people who started it off being the only ones to gain. That was how £17million was lost by investors in the notorious Titan pyramid scheme that sprang up five years ago and ensnared hundreds of people in Lancashire.

True, people hear astonishing stories of others making money galore from these schemes. But that is all part of the process of sucking in losers.

The trouble is, because these schemes do not involve the sale of goods or services, they are hard to control by law. But even if they do quite come into the confidence-trickster realm of obtain money by false pretences, they still do so through false and foolish expectations.

Be warned. And don't get your fingers burned.