Four residents in Canadian province of British Columbia (B.C.) were found to have conducted a "deliberate and well-organized" fraud that resulted in more than 800 investors losing 10 million U.S. dollars, the Canadian Press reported Friday.
The B.C. Securities Commission said the three men and one woman began the fraud in 2005 with an investment club. They lied to investors about how their money would be invested, the returns investors could expect and the risk associated with the investments.
What the four people have done are described as a Ponzi scheme, which means to pay returns to separate investors from their own money, or money paid by other investors, rather than from profits from the investments themselves.
The B.C. Securities Commission said investors in B.C. and elsewhere deposited about 16 million dollars before the scheme collapsed in June 2007. Investors tricked by the Ponzi scheme received back as little as 3 million dollars and no more than 5.6 million dollars.
Source: Xinhua
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