Two more days will be Singapore national day.  In more than 40 years of nation building, Singapore has her up and down. In this post, i will talk about the biggest scam in Singapore history.

In recent months, a man by the name James Phang Wah has been persecuted in courts for engineering the biggest scam business in Singapore history.  Back in August 2006, he started the Sunshine Empire here in Singapore.  In slightly more than a year, his organization has sold more than 26,000 financial packages, bringing in a whopping $180m to Sunshine coffers.

What is this ‘financial packages’?  There are nothing but an empty shelf with nice mlm marketing packaging.  Accordingly, for every $12,000 investment in the financial package, you get to receive $1000 every month for the next 8 years.  Do this sound too good to be true?  If it did sound too good to be true, then it probably is.

Most importantly, how do you judge if a scheme is ponzi or a pure mlm business system.

This are the points to look out for:

1)  If there are no physical products involved in the sales of any packages, then be very careful.  Do your due diligent.

2)  If the packages sold come with promise of  high return every month for a long duration with little work, think again.  Again, do you due diligent.  Ask yourself where do they get the money to pay you the fat bonuses?  Is it from business profits or from some other people pocket.

3) When you see that they spent ridiculous amount of money on the decoration of their HQ, beware!  All this money that they spend must come from somewhere.  The question is where?  (from investors pocket?)  Normally in a ponzi scheme, they need to attract new members with nice decoration of their HQ so that there will be enough money to pay the interest of existing investor.  In other words, they roll the money from the market place with an empty product with a lot of empty promises.

Indeed, James Phang Wah has bring shame to Singapore and the mlm industries.  MLM by design is a great marketing system.  However, with a little twist to it, something good can turn into a ponzi scheme.

MLM system pay people for using product and introducing their friends to use product.  In a mlm system, if no one buy product, the revenue don’t come in and nothing drastic will happen. It’s just that the company don’t make money, that’s all. It’s the same like conventional business. No product sales, no revenue.

However, in a ponzi scheme, if no one buy packages, the whole system collapse because they need a lot of new money to pay existing clients.

In a pozi scheme, it is like…. you pay, he pay, she pay …. and i pay him interest

you pay, he pay, she pay….  and i pay him interest

and when no one come to in to pay….  cannot pay the interest of existing clients as promised.

Unlike a ponzi scheme, mlm business is the most beautiful marketing system ever designed.  It allowed ordinary man and woman to run a home based business.  They removed money spent on hiring sales staffs, advertisement, warehouse cost etc and channel this money to pay the mlmer instead.  And they also provide rock solid educational program to groom ordinary man and woman to be entrepreneurs and business man.  If you want to know more about mlm, go to http://www.businessopportunitysg.com.

Well, all is not doom for Singapore because the evil scheme has been exposed and the culprits have been brought to court.  The only regret is that many people have been cheated of their hard earned money at Sunshine Empire.

Here are a video of  the greatest business conspiracy in Singapore history, Sunshine Empire.

I would love to end this post with this message “Happy Birthday Singapore! I am proud to be a Singaporean”.

The internet marketing industry is heading in a spiral downward trend.

No. Don’t get me wrong.  You can still make a lot of money marketing online.  In spite of the economy performing under the water, many marketers are still making a lot of money marketing online in present time.

Here is the thing.  The entire industry is flooded with internet marketers who lie just to get their customers money out front.  Not all internet marketers are like that.  There are good honest internet marketers who make money online with great products, awesome marketing strategy and provide a lot of good value to their customers.

However, many are trying to pull a fast ‘Joe Kumar’.  If you are in this industry long enough, Joe Kumar is a little guy in Singapore who are catch with fraud, cheating his JV partner of his copywriting rights and reputation, way back in 2003.  He has seen fled Singapore and no one know where he is residing in right now.  To sum it all, he is the ‘bad sheep’ of the industry. 

Joe Kumar also lie about his promise that he is only offering the master resales right of his famous “How to get out of poverty in 30 days, with no money and everything but just a notebook and an internet connection” book.  In the book, he interviews 60 experts who lay out step by step what they will do on a daily basis to get out of poverty with internet marketing in 30 days.

In his sales letter that promote the master resales right of his book, he mentioned that the offer is only given to 10 lucky customer.  However, many who have brought from him have later realized that he is pulling a quick buck out from them.  He has sold the master resales right of the product to more than 30 person.

Well… i am not pointing a finger at Joe Kumar.  Everyone has a past and he could be a change person now.  The point that i want to elaborate is that, there are many Joe Kumar in the internet marketing industry at the present.  Most of them lie in the exact same manner as Joe. 

They promised that only a certain copies of their product are to be sold.  Once the limited copies are sold, they will pull the product out from the industry.  Most lie about it.  If the demand is good, most of them sold more than than the limited number that they have said.  Do you not think they lie?

Yes, i know that they are using the limited number as a marketing bait to generate scarcity and get everyone to take action to buy.  This is alright.  But what went wrong is that they lie to their customers and sold more copies than the acutual numbers that they promised.  Come on… a promise is a promise.  You can’t break them just because you want to put more money into your pocket.

Some internet marketers even manufactured reasons why they increase the original number of volume offered.  This is know as ‘Reason why’ marketing.  Again i have nothing against ‘Reason Why’ marketing.  Indeed, i use it myself in my marketing effort.  What went wrong here is that internet marketers lie and give fake reasons to increase the numbers of their original limited offer.

As internet marketer, we need to be honest and protect our integrity with highest vigilance.   Eventually, when people get burned of their hard earn money and realized how they have been lied to, there will be more careful not to fall into the same marketing trap again.  Or do we need to reinvent the entire internet marketing industry and come out with a brand new marketing system that promote honesty, integrity and yet make us a lot of money?  How about calling it “Integrity Marketing”?   This is my five cents worth of opinion and do give your feedback as comments in this post.

There are money to be make in the internet marketing industry.  However, we need to do it with the highest integrity and honesty.  If you are interested in joining me to make money online selling information and share the same marketing value, do consider working with Patric Chan and myself in our RPS2.0 Coaching Program.