The struggle of the state with financial pyramids was called the battle of Hercules with the hydra

“In place of each severed head, three new ones grow”

In Russia, there has been a real boom in financial pyramids. In the nine months of this year, the Central Bank has identified almost 1,500 organizations with signs of a financial pyramid, 527 of them in the third quarter alone. These data were announced by the director of the department for combating unfair practices of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Valery Lyakh. According to him, in most cases, the regulator identifies these organizations within three days and manages to block, “so that people do not have time to use their services.”

The bulk of the identified 1481 financial pyramids operate in the Internet space: 97% are online projects, including online economic games. More than half are sites offering to invest in cryptocurrencies and pseudo-digital assets. Adding danger to them is the involvement of children and young people. Earlier, the Central Bank calculated the losses of Russians from participating in such schemes – citizens, seduced by the possibility of easy money, lose 10-12 billion rubles a year.

As for games, they basically work on the principle of network marketing: in order to receive a reward or a win, you need to bring new players to the project – as a rule, these are acquaintances or relatives. If there are none, the project is stopped, curtailed, while the invested money cannot be withdrawn. About why the situation with fraudulent Internet projects has worsened so much, we asked financial analyst, Ph.D. in Economics Mikhail Belyaev.

– It’s all about the general atmosphere of uncertainty, including the economic one. Against the backdrop of an acute geopolitical situation, people are confused, knocked out of their usual rut, which means they are prone to making impulsive, rash decisions. In troubled times, you always want to find an asset that will ensure the safety of funds, and even increase them. Moreover, such familiar instruments as investments in foreign currency have been lost. And online projects are an exceptionally convenient field for the implementation of any unscrupulous plans. A person does not need to physically drag himself to some office, wait for his turn, just turn on the computer, find a website, select a service… Plus, the virtual environment is full of myths about cryptocurrency as some kind of miraculous remedy, as the currency of the future, an ideal asset.

– Network games have become a relatively new form of financial pyramids. How dangerous are they?

-This trap is terribly addictive, as gambling addiction is added to the pyramid factor. You are not directly offered to join this community, invest money and increase your capital. You are offered only to try to play. However, the calculation is made on the fact that a person will be interested, carried away, drawn in, and the bait will be swallowed. And then everything is built on the endless draining of funds. Innocent outwardly fun ends up with huge losses. Well, there were always enough fans to earn easy money. And many today have plenty of free time, especially among young people.

– According to the Central Bank, they successfully and promptly block such sites. Is it really true?

– Well, they blocked it, because in an hour others appear in their place. This does not mean that fraudsters should not be dealt with. But the result of such a struggle should be to bring them to justice. Otherwise, the organizers of the pyramids come out of the water dry, having managed to remove all the foam from the project before it was neutralized. No punishment, no fines. This is reminiscent of the fight between Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra, which had the body of a snake with nine heads. In place of each severed head, three new ones grew, until the hero, along with his friend Iolaus, realized that they needed to be burned.