The news coming in of what looks to be another bogus company duping quite a sizeable number of people, this time in Jiribam sub division is not surprising. It is an old story that is built on a projected image. Such Bogus companies have a simple theory that is put into practice to lure people: the promise of more for less. The shine of easy money and little work is what gets people flocking to such ‘companies’. The modus operandi also involves a veneer of putting up a front of respectability and is aided by a façade that is aimed at befuddling the public into believing that the ‘company’ is for real. There are also common denominators at work when it comes to various fraud companies: smooth talkers being involved, promise of upgrades according to performance, benchmarks and targets for roping in new entrants into the fold etc. Called by various terms, ‘companies’ peddle household items to utensils or cosmetics to a range of products through what they call their ‘pyramid’ structure. What a person who applies to be a part of such structure is told is that he/she would need to bring in more people who in turn would have to bring in other people and son on to be able to get more profit margins. People start out by thinking they will tap into their social circles and through their professional networks. The simple arithmetic of course is that the money that is being promised is actually a fraction of the investments being made by the layers of people that are in the so called pyramid.
So long as people are willing to be lulled by the promise of easy money, there never will be any dearth of people who will tap into this human fallacy and make the most of it. For a majority of people loathe to take up labor in terms of working in fields, cleaning up roads and work sites or to sweep and swap around, such fake companies are perfect for keeping up appearances of being engaged in a blue collar job. The reality with most people in the state is that they want to say they work for a company as an officer or with some such fancy post instead of sweating it out by working. Which is why people have no qualms forking out money starting from a few thousands to a few lakhs to get ‘employed’ in ‘Company’. The news from Jiribam follows on the heels of another such scam that was unraveled by the Churachandpur police a few months back. In that particular case, it had come to light that the name of a nationally known brand BSNL (for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) was being misused by using the acronym for the company- Broadcasting Service Network Ltd. and projecting itself as a 3G Indian Mobile Service. The bogus company took the popular route of getting investors who would deposit money with them and additionally, bring in other people who would deposit their money. In return, the investors or depositors were promised money as per the amount of capital invested and the number of people they inducted. But these instances in Jiribam or Churachandpur were not the first such instances of people investing their hard earned money to hard sell dreams of getting back high returns.
The inherent human nature of greed or ‘wanting more’ lulls many who are ever willing to earn money the easy way and reflects the nature of carelessness. Instead of being wary of the promises of financial returns and looking into legal mechanisms in case the promises of ‘return money’ are not honored, most people get into a frenzy of getting more and more people inducted without realizing that the game plan of such scams is to raise more and more capital within the shortest time possible and then decamp with the loot. But even as such cases surface, the reality is that such cases will only continue till the time people are not willing to toil and work. Interestingly, those who are involved in running the bogus companies and their various activities are those who come across as smooth talkers who are good at projecting themselves and ironically, the greater good of people. When such smooth talks projecting false dream sales gets pitched to those willing to get carried away by the lure of easy money, it creates a heady cocktail that gets refilled over time, so long as there are people willing to fall prey.