COMPLAINTS are flooding in to trading standards officers over a get-rich-quick scheme which is putting families deep in debt.
But the calls are not condemning the secretive Titan organisation which runs the money-for-nothing deal.
They are from people who have thrown £2,500 into the pyramid plan and are encouraging family and friends to do the same.
"We have received more than 50 calls and most are upset that we are trying to stop the scheme," says Lancashire's senior fair trading officer, Julian Edwards.
"They just cannot see that they are almost certain to lose money - most of them every penny of it.
"They are leading their families and friends into long-term debt and at the end of the day they won't be thanked for it."
The scheme, run by a German company, is attracting hundreds of people to conference centre presentations throughout the country every weekend.
Investors are sworn to secrecy and must sign a document agreeing to forfeit 10,000 Deutschemarks if they tell anyone about what goes on.
The scheme is sold with almost evangelical fervour with organisers whipping up the passions of investors with the prospect of vast riches.
One Nelson couple alarmed members of their family by their total commitment to the scheme when they returned from a presentation at Trentham Gardens Conference Centre, near Stoke.
"They were like people we didn't know - full of enthusiasm and real belief that they were going to be rich and wanted us to join in and be rich, too." said a daughter.
"They just wouldn't tell us anything about it but said we were fools if we didn't go along and take the chance of a lifetime."
The husband took time off work to tout friends to go out recruiting friends in the area.
The couple, who have little savings, raised their £2,500 by going into debt on their Visa Card.
The cash was collected at their home near Marsden Park by a night-time caller.
The Department of Trade has condemned the scheme and is looking at legal ways to stop it.
The scheme is plausible enough and success depends on investors, or members as they are termed, bringing other £2,500-bearing investors into the project.
If, for instance, one member who has put in £2,500, persuades three members of his family to throw in £2,500 each, he will recover £2,000 of his original investment out of their funds.
But the family will still be out of pocket to the tune of £8,000.
Julian Edwards said: "The scheme mushrooms, cannot be sustained and simply collapses.
"Just think about it - to make real money you would have to have ten levels of investor after the original member. That would involve 29,524 people investing nearly £74 million.
"Of those, at least 26,250 will be out of pocket, three-quarters of them by the full amount."
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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