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Type:Ponzi Scheme | Keywords: PyraBang | Other Keywords: pyrabang.com, rebecca beasley, Christian Edward Piccolo
| Notes:
PyraBang.com purports to be some sort
of article sharing service that allows members to post articles and other members can tag articles that they like which in turn gives the author a small commission. It uses
the angle that national or large media outlets cannot be trusted so in turn provides a way of letting the general public communicate news or knowledge without the need for the
press. It also uses the angle that members that utilise popular social sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter essentially work for nothing when they build their profiles and
perform other social tasks assoicated with these social networking sites - PyraBang claims to pay its members back as they `work`.
The main problem is that
PyraBang charges its members to join and post articles and gives commissions for recruiting others, and after examining the scheme, we were unable to find any source of
significant income coming into it other than the monthly charges. This presuambly means that the money coming into the scheme from the monthly charges is the same source of
income that is paid out to other members who write the most popular articles and recruit newer members. This in turn means that PyraBang is in reality an illegal pyramid
scheme in disguise, and basic math would dictate that the overall pay-in is less than the overall pay-out, meaning when this inevitably collapses or gets shut down, the
majority of its members will lose out and fail to make more money than their monthly charges.
This is not the only problem PyraBang has however. It`s basic
foundation of letting cyberspace users share knowledge as a product is one that has been done by many other sites that do not charge at all, like Wikipedia and EzineArticles,
meaning that even if the payment structure of PyraBang was legal and sound, it is still unlikely to attract significant amounts of members. The site attempts to counteract
that argument by claiming the members who post on Pyrabang are `grade 13 geniuses` who can post more informative articles than other cyberspace users. In reality however, the
majority of the content posted on Pyrabang at the time of writing seems to be biased political pieces, `Obama-bashing` and various other conspiracy theory related articles,
suggesting that Pyrabang is not only a pyramid scheme but also a platform for political activists to spread various propoganda, which in turn suggests articles posted on
PyraBang are in fact less reliable than mainstream media outlets or other articles marketing sites, which contradicts the whole foundation of bypassing mainstream
press, an ideology the site is clearly based upon.
Additionally complaints have begun to surface about continued and unauthorised billing and high pressure
tactics to recruit and maintain members.
Overall the whole business model does not make sense and the simple fact that PyraBang does not create any income
without its monthly membership fees means this is just a pyramid scheme ran by an evident political activist. We would urge our readers to avoid this scheme and for those
readers that do share the beliefs and ideologies of Pyrabang.com (or other) we would recommend supporting relevant bloggers or content providers a legitimate way, of which
there are plenty on the Internet.
02/05/2010 UPDATE: Owner of Pyrabang is arrested.
| Article No:808
Date Added:04/17/10 |
Dangerous?:yes
How Convincing?:Not that convincing |
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