In 2020, I received a message from one of my close high school friends. He was someone with whom I laughed with during school recess, confided my secrets, and altogether shared the best moments of our relationships until now.
He told me about a business, what he called an exciting online business opportunity, that already changed his life.
“I had found something big. I want you to join me in this opportunity.”
He spoke with lots of enthusiasm about the prospects including exclusive conferences, travel, flexible work, and financial freedom. He then evidenced the claim with his travel photos standing in front of sleek cars, posh hotels, and grandeur meeting halls with individuals he claimed to be successful business operators.
“What goods or services am I supposed to deal with?”, I asked.
“Nothing. All I had to do was to bring more people into the line of that business. It can be friends, relatives, or even someone whom I do not know.”
This left me questioning and feeling uneasy.
What kind of business generates revenue not for selling or promoting any product or service, but simply for recruiting new members into its chain?
And, as soon as he said, “Your income will multiply with addition of new members”, this did not sit right with me. His words felt like recycled promises that I have heard it several times before.
I asked, “Is this legal?”
He laughed it off.
“Of course. Nowadays, everyone including senior bureaucrats, law makers, and now even some politicians are promoting it”
But something in me resisted. It was not just doubt, it was discomfort. The idea of pulling people in to favour me gain income or success felt wrong to me.
I declined him politely.
The Truth
Years passed and I forgot about the conversation until recently the headlines in the national newspaper caught my eye.
A major online business scam, popularly known as pyramid scheme has been exposed. Also referred to as Ponzi scheme or Chain referral schemes, the numbers have staggered with millions lost, hundreds of victims, families torn apart, and many lives miserably changed forever.
And there it was. The name of the very company my friend had spoken about.
My heart sank. I could not believe the time when one of my best friends proudly invited me into this business.
I quickly opened the Facebook Messenger and found our old thread of communication. Without indicating what I read from the mainstream and social media, I wrote:
“Hi Malik (business tycoon).
How is your online business going these days?”
He read my message the same day but has responded it only on the next day.
“Oh, I stopped. The authorities did not allow it anymore”
Drenched with shock and surprise, I stared at the screen. He even did not have a trace of guilt. Not even a sign of regret. He wrote to me just like an inconvenience where his genuine business was forced to close early.
Then, I asked directly.
“But you said it was legitimate. How many people have you pulled into it? How many have you hurt?”
“I do not know. People still call me asking for their money back. But I am not responsible. I got what I wanted. I have no loss”
And that was the moment something inside me broke even more terribly.
Not because my friend had fooled others, but because he could speak so lightly about misconduct. I was dumbfounded how a good and educated human being I knew had stopped seeing people as people (particularly our own fellow Bhutanese) and started using them as commodity to earn money income for him by networking with someone whom he does not even know. I was overwhelmed with disbelief, heartbroken that a dear friend, someone I had trusted for years since my high school, was willing to place a price tag on our bond and ready to sacrifice the purity of our relationship just to make some money for himself.
My Reflections
Thinking of his casual chat, a chain of questions began to swirl in my mind like a relentless river.
Why do educated people, who have access to knowledge, resources, and moral thinking, fall for garbage business ideas like this?
What has the education we obtained through our schools and our parents got to do if it is not meant to shape our character and guide us toward ethical choices?
What reward does one get in deceiving and exploiting our own people who are naturally so innocent, so full of trust and faith, that they seldom stop to question the truth of what they are told?
As teacher who taught thousands of students over a decade across different schools, I have always imparted that the value of our education is supposed to signify depth of thought, a foundation of responsibility, understanding of good versus evil, and of course, realising the consequences our actions on the world around us. Yet here my friend was, busy selling people’s trust for a quick fix and personal gains by consciously ignoring the impact it had on the very people who believed in him.
It was painful to witness my friend sacrificing morals for money all due to his greed. His education and knowledge have fallen prey to such schemes not because he was ignorant, but because he was impatient. Perhaps, the promise of quick success, and fortune without struggle seduced this educated fellow.
What a shame it is!
The more I reflected, the more the truth became glaringly obvious. When money becomes the only priority, our humane (precisely Buddhist) ideals such as lay Judrey and Tha- Damtsig die. The ability to see others as equals, to feel their pain, to consider their well-being, these are the first sacrifices made in the pursuit of wealth. Relationships these days are no longer about connection, it is about transactions.
And in that shift, people become targets. Friends become stepping stones. Families are no longer the support system, but the next generation of potential victims. We stop being human with each other. We become mere players in a game of gain, where the stakes are higher than ever before, and the damage we do is invisible until it is too late.
But why cheat our own family, friends, or relatives who know well and trust us the most? What motivates us to fraud the people, knowingly pull them into a trap, and invite them into a cycle of loss just for purpose of self-serving gain or boosting the rubbish business idea of someone whom we even do not know?
It was these questions that stung me the hardest.
On the other side, I was not surprised because the world has increasingly become so wrong because we are made to believe that success is accumulation of wealth, power, or status. In pursuit of such things, we exchange our ethics for the illusion of success, convincing ourselves that the ends always justify the means. But in the cold light of truth, the means are what haunt us, long after the money is gone.
The pyramid schemes are nothing different. They are not just scams. They are mirrors that reflect the dark side of our human nature, showing us how far we are willing to go to chase success (e.g., money), regardless of the cost and built on false promises.
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