I don’t know if it has something to do with the difficulties of life or people are just becoming smarter everyday.  Have you observed how a nouveau riche scam becomes more and more complex as time goes by?  Before, in the Philippines, what we have was the budul-budul gang where a person would call a household to tell whoever answers the phone, most of the time it will be the maids, that the homeowner had an accident and needs money badly for the hospital.  I don’t know how they do it but most of the time they will go and give the money to the suspects.  A few years later, another nouveau riche scam came into light better known as pyramid scam.  How it works?  Hmmm… First, the founder recruits a certain number of people.  He/she will introduce a product and will make it appear as if the member will earn by commission if the member will sell the product.   So for you to sell the product, you need to shell out a certain amount from 5,000 to 10,000 as starters.  The founder gives a kit to the member so that the member will start selling the product.  And then the founder would say you know what, why don’t you recruit at least two members.  So that, you can earn more for you will also get commisions on their sales.  And if your two members will be able to recruit two each, you and your two recruits will get commission on whatever their recruits sells and so on and so forth.  But the pyramid scam that really which I consider the nouveau rich scam of all time, works the same way as the one that I mentioned but the member does not need to sell any product.  All the member has to do is invest and to recruit people and encourage them to do the same.  What happens is, a member will be asked to shell out at least 10,000 pesos and is promised that his/her money will return in a short period.  So surely enough, a check with the promised amount will arrive a few weeks later.  And then the founding member will contact you to tell you that you can increase your investment to get a higher commision but you can’t go beyond 100,000 pesos to give way to others who may want to join the company.  Since you were able to get a check for your first investment, you go ahead and put 100,000 Pesos more and tell your friends and family members.  You give your testimony that it is true and then convinced them to invest money and then… BAM!  The company closes down and the founder goes into hiding… with your money of course.  Tsk, tsk, tsk… Is it really about the criminal mind going complex or is it plainly our greed that brings us to this kind of situation?