What's up with so many NTU students touting MLM/pyramid schemes?

By Glioblastoma21



Not one, not two, not three, but FOUR of my LinkedIn connections have reached out of late to offer me a "business opportunity" and a "chance to earn some passive income". It always starts off with them sending me a follow request (each has 500+ connections) and then they follow through by thanking me for accepting their request, quizzing me about my plans for further education and career aspirations yada yada, before finally delivering the killer line: "would you be interested in joining me and my business partners to develop a side hustle?"


The common denominator between these third-rate crooks? They ALL hail from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and ALL of them are pursuing a STEM-related course - I shall now go into detail without doxxing their identities to avoid potential legal repercussions.


Every such individual explained that he/she was a "business leader" and his/her business "linked consumers to suppliers who produced various types of goods". Basically, they were all ostensibly plugged into the supply chain industry or acting as middlemen between consumers and suppliers.


The head honcho of this pyramid scheme who initiated contact was an NTU graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering. He seemed like a bright young man with strong prospects based on his long list of work experience and academic credentials (90RPs, dean's list, First Class Honours etc) cited. I performed a Google search on him and discovered he gave 'A' Level Physics and Mathematics tuition at a learning centre. I went through a few interview rounds before he tasked me with reading a Robert Kiyosaki book (titled "The Business of the 21st Century"), and subsequently giving him 3 takeaways and 3 questions as a means to evaluate my compatibility with his "business vision". The moment I heard the words "Robert Kiyosaki" leave his mouth, I sensed something was seriously amiss given Kiyosaki's own fractured reputation as a conman and fraudulent businessman. Nevertheless I read the book cover to cover; as expected I found myself disagreeing with the "associate network business model" nonsense that Kiyosaki was spouting - which I ardently reflected to him thereafter. He ghosted me immediately on both Whatsapp and LinkedIn.


For the uninitiated, "associate networking" is an euphemism for a pyramid scheme/multi-level marketing (MLM) scam, where each level in a pyramid earns income based on how many newcomers they bring into the company, thus creating a pyramid structure from top to bottom as the number of newcomers grows exponentially with each current member recruiting ever more gullible fools. I consulted a friend with connections to the government and thoroughly quizzed him about the legality of this business practice. I was informed that MLM firms are largely illegal but there are some loopholes that existing firms can always exploit to remain in the game. Take insurance companies for example, which basically operate using the pyramid model.


Ironically, the said NTU graduate's recruit ended up reaching out to me concurrently alongside him. This other crook happened to be a Year 1 Material Science and Engineering student at NTU. He spouted the same "escaping the matrix" nonsense that his boss did, while also asking me to evaluate the same damn Kiyosaki book as part of my interview process. When I mentioned that another "business leader" already tried recruiting me and gave him his name, he told me the previous guy was actually the one who recruited him. Ironically the head honcho himself was oblivious to the existence of this Year 1 NTU student when I made an enquiry. Obviously it set off alarm bells and I suspected the head honcho had already since drafted a ton of people into the pyramid scheme, which was why he couldn't recall everyone's names offhand.


Just very recently, a female Year 3 Material Science and Engineering student (yes, at NTU too) and a male student formerly from Ngee Ann Polytechnic who is about to matriculate into NTU (not again!) approached me separately for the SAME DAMN "BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY" to "join their team of business partners".


To say I am monumentally pissed doesn't even begin to scrape the surface because I accepted their requests and responded to their introductions assuming that I was building authentic relations for me to leverage in future. Are these students really so poor and needy that they'll resort to running a scam in order to make a quick buck? This is exactly the kind of wanton greed that they talk about in the Bible. Suffice to say, this string of unfortunate events has somewhat ruined my perspective of NTU and its students.


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