How to spot a Ponzi scheme: 2 of my tips!

Hi guys, Sarah Sullivan here, CBO Capital. It is the 5th of the month and I have already had 5 investor calls where investors told me they were part of a Ponzi scheme or a scam. These numbers, they're getting too big. And the thing is that there are two easy things you can do to make sure you're not part of a scam or a Ponzi scheme. I mean, they're not foolproof, but at least they're a step in the right direction. And none of the investors I talk to over, over the past year have ever done this. So I'm going to share them with you. But first I did a little digging. Here are some statistics. In 2019, there were 60 Ponzi schemes. 60 discovered that represented $3 billion in investor fraud. In 202145 Ponzi schemes discovered, representing 5.3 billion in investor money lost. Okay? In 202257 Ponzi schemes discovered. That's one every six days last year. Okay, so the, those that make the news that you hear about, you know, Bernie Madoff, FTX last year with Sam Traders domain, which is still in review, the carbon capture scam, all of these, the one thing they have in common is that they're not regulated or audited or overviewed by a third party at all. So like ftx, it was just like going by the seat of the pan. Bernie Madoff, all of his reports that he was giving people were self produced by his own company. Everything that's hit the news is like the biggest scam of all time. There was never a third party involved who was auditing, creating the taxes, creating the track record, creating the investor reports. That's the common thread. So when you're reviewing an investment to go into, you can ask for a third party report. So for instance, for a fund, some funds are managed in house. We have some that are managed in house. They're real estate because they're really easy, right? But what about a hedge fund? Do they have a third party who's a fund admin? So we're launching a hedge fund and we are intentionally having a third party manage it. A third party who manages over 2000 hedge funds so that investors can see, hey, someone else is looking at the bank account of the fund every month they see investor money come in, they see trading activity, they see investor money going out and that it's from trading activity and not from additional investor funds coming in. So that's one thing you can do is say, hey, if you, is there a third party who is Watching your bank account. Is there a fund admin? Is there someone else who can verify your track record? That's one thing. The second thing, if they say no, we do all fund admin in house, which some real estate funds do, right? Then you can say, okay, do you have a CPA or an accountant who's third party external who is watching your bank account? So, for instance, we have a third party who's our bookkeeper. So they're looking at the bank account, watching money come in and come out. Our CPA for all of our funds. The CPA for Sugo Capital Cash Flow Fund, he looks at my bank records and he looks at money coming in and going out, making sure that it's not investor money coming in in order to pay investor money going out. So it's not a Ponzi scheme. So you can ask for, hey, do you have a third party CPA who's verifying and looking at the bank accounts? Now, this one's a little tricky because you might have an instance of a third party cpa, but they do everything off of Excel spreadsheet. Okay, so, and that's not wrong, it's just you can't verify if those numbers were made up or not. Right? But if a CPA looks at the bank account every month, the monthly statements, in order to make sure where is the money coming from, where is it going, then that CPA is basically vouching for the reality of that track fund, of that project. So I hope this helps. So, two things. It's actually one thing. Is there a third party external to the company, external to the fund, who's looking at the bank accounts and can give you that information, who can basically verify what's going on? It's not a Ponzi scheme because they can see in a bank account where is the money coming from and where is it going. So I hope that helps. I hope that you can follow those two steps in order to keep yourself out of the increasing number of Ponzi schemes. Also, to note, 25% of the Ponzi schemes and scams involved crypto. And so that doesn't mean I'm saying don't go and do anything in crypto. It means just take your extra steps in due diligence when you're doing something in that area. Hope that helps. Thanks, guys.