Little is known of how the E-creator story was resolved  at the courts, but this is the biggest ponzi scheme in Zimbabwe this year. Crafted in Nigeria at the end of the year 2022 and introduced in Zimbabwe in February 2023 running for a good 6 months before busting. In Nigeria it was known as Amita and in Zimbabwe launched as E-Creator. More than US$2m was lost in the process despite warnings that the ponzi scheme had short legs.

Meanwhile on the forum we also witnessed one of the most sophisticated scams from a member called Charmz but popularly known as Mai Tawana. She advertised widely across social media including ZBIN. Her modus operandi was as follows;

• Invite unsuspecting members of the public to partner in a fish deal.
• He business model involved buying fish from Kariba and selling to Holiday Inn Hotel.
• The first deal would go perfectly well—cash invested coming back with 100% profits.
• Victims excited by high profits bait, would reinvest in the dubious fish project.
• Victims asked to keep paper trail of fish procurement receipts—and Holiday Inn invoices. In summary running a Profit and Loss Statement showing huge paper profits.

Attempts to verify the existence of the Holiday Inn Buyer were not successful as she said he preferred remaining anonymous. And no one really verified whether there was any purchase of Kariba Fish. Therefore Mai Tawana involved in procurement …and also selling fish to Holiday Inn. Investors keeping profit statements and records.

Easy for students of finance to sniff out anomalies, but then ignorance is a multi- billion dollar business. By the time Mai Tawana was outted as a scammer—a total of $3000 had been lost by forum members. Outside the forum—Mai Tawana had fleeced investors of US$25,000.

Recovery attempts by victims did not yield much as she went underground.

Doing business in 2024 especially partnering with anyone? Think carefully and engage professionals before putting paper to pen and parting with your hard earned monies. Not all that glitters is gold. We expect more sophisticated scams to visit Zimbabwe in 2024 with most of them imported from high crime regions.

Generally Zimbabweans avoid boarding empty public transport especially unbranded buses, kombis or the mshikashikas. They just hang outside waiting for alternate transport or for the bus to fill up and be the last to join. Perhaps herd mentality of safety in numbers?

You have obviously witnessed this, or possibly experienced it. Getting into an empty bus comes with many risks of time wasted as it could take quite some time to fill up. When you take your time waiting outside—you have many options.

To rig the system-touts introduced an insidious Bus Full Strategy whereby touts hoodwink passengers that the bus is almost full and therefore triggering a rush. Once you get into the bus and comfortably take a seat, you will have one shock waiting for you as the touts will disembark leaving you alone or with a few other passengers cheated the same way.

A very frustrating experience especially those travelling long distance especially Harare-Bulawayo, Harare to Mutare or Harare to Beitbridge. You board the bus thinking its leaving, only for it to make a u-turn a few hundred meters and start picking passengers for the umpteenth time using the same strategy. Even in musical concerts, most fans are now preferring hanging outside venues till main artists come onto the stage.

Dear Zbinites, the same strategy used by touts is used across the board. The take- over of Twitter by Elon Musk was involved in a prolonged negotiations process  for a revised takeover price due to a record number of ghost accounts. Every Social Media site has had to secretly use ghost accounts to boost numbers which acts as a bait for unsuspecting new members.

What are the factors you use to view a musical video on Youtube? Are others following the video? How many views? Is it trending? The lesser the views, the more likely for it to remain so. Helps explain why fake views are now a big industry with artists parting with huge sums in-order to boost views.

Before joining a Whatsapp Forum, many first check out the numbers—the more the numbers the better. The same strategy is also used by Ponzi Schemers with the last one being E-Creator.

Of course this brings a lot of questions on ethics—where do you draw the line? To what extend can one use purchased views or ghost accounts? No wonder why this topic is best handled away from the finance professionals. But for start-ups—when considering launching a new product or service, you could use the Empty Kombi Strategy to overcome resistance. Zimbabweans view all new products with suspicion—they need numbers to build and boost confidence!