In early 2021 a client of mine mentioned that they were considering a ‘20% guaranteed’ investment called ‘Profit Connect Wealth Services.’ I briefly examined the company’s website which showed all kinds of fraudulent-looking, to-good-to-be-true claims (the website has since been seized by the SEC.)
My scam alert immediately went off and I did a little online digging, turning up this useful report from December 2020 from behindmlm.com that researches scammy MLM (multi-level marketing) type companies.
I agreed with behindmlm.com’s assessment that Profit Connect was likely committing securities fraud, and I duly reported them to the SEC and the Nevada securities commission– since that’s where the company was headquartered– on April 27th, 2021.
Three months later on July 20th the SEC announced that they had shut down Profit Connect for operating as a Ponzi scheme. I have no idea if my report helped, or if the SEC was already on the trail thanks to other reporters, but it feels good to have hopefully contributed a small ‘concerned citizen’ action that the guv’ment followed through on and took the bad guys down.
Hooray for the system working to protect the little guy, kudos to the SEC regulators for following up and taking relatively swift action, and props behindmlm.com for doing good work to protect people!
Have you ever fallen victim to an investment-related swindle, legal or otherwise? How did it go? What can we learn from your experience? Share in the comments below!
