Pay down $2,880 dollars, recruit two friends to do the same, and then collect $23,000 dollars in just a few weeks, no strings attached. It's a deal too good to refuse, and many Belizeans - women in particular - are buying into the so-called "Dreamcatcher scheme". You'll hear it cloaked in the garb of "Women empowering Women" or other such fanciful language, but the experts confirm that this is just one more version of a pyramid scheme, or an endless chain fraud: where the pyramid always collapses, and the chain always ends, leaving those at the bottom, or the end of the chain, out in the cold, and with no way to recover their investment.
Today, the Financial Investigator at the FIU told us they have received several reports of fraud related to this scheme:
Sgt. Lillian Lopez, Financial Investigator, FIU
"Over the past few months the FIU has received several reports from the police in regards to this investment scheme, but can be classified as a pyramid scheme. It's based on recruitments of its members by means of promising them a return of payment. The new recruits are being paid by the organizer with the investment from the earlier recruits. however once that payment is made, those that are paid need to go out and recruit others and those recruits need to go out and recruit others and it grows and grows until it becomes so huge that those that are the organizers of this scheme cannot afford to pay every member that has invested, so it becomes unsustainable. There are 
some red flags pertaining to some of these investments. Some of the red flags are the promise of a high return for a little investment over a short period of time. Another thing is there is no genuine product that is being sold, no service at all so how is this investment going to gather any money? The third thing is that it's based solely on recruitment, no program will survive forever on recruitment, so it's very risky at the end of the day. There is no guarantee that you will receive whatever money that is being invested for some time. They have promised 10x the amount that you have invested, under the laws of Belize, it is not illegal. However this scheme may stem into a fraud because whatever is promised will become unsustainable."
We've heard reports of the scheme being very active in Stann Creek, Belmopan and Belize City. To repeat, the FIU warns that it's a fraudulent scheme, and most of those who get in won't get their money back.
Here's why: because the scheme depends on new recruits. If more join later, those who enrolled earlier will get their payout. Then, those who had joined later will get their promised rewards only if many more join after them. The problem is, the number of investors required to keep this going, grows each time more people join. But, endless expansion is impossible - because there are only so many people available to join, and when that number is exhausted, the scheme collapses and those at the bottom, lose their investment.
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