12DailyPro Investigation IV
The SEC announced
the filing of securities fraud charges against the operators of www.12dailypro.com, a "paid autosurf program" that in fact was a massive Ponzi scheme which raised more than $50 million from over 300,000 investors worldwide by offering a 44% return on investment in just 12 days. As a result of the Commission's charges, the defendants, Charis Johnson, age 33, of Charlotte, N.C., and her companies, 12daily Pro and LifeClicks, LLC ("LifeClicks"), ceased their solicitation of investors and agreed to a freeze of all their assets and the appointment of a receiver who will take control of the companies' operations.
The SEC's complaint can be read here. In their complaint, the SEC alleges that 12Daily Pro has "raised" over $50 million from over 300,000 "investors" worldwide.
Why is it that there remain shrill defenders of this scheme? Are the defenders the big time winners, small winners, or big time losers?
My guess is that the small time winners are the loudest defenders of the program.
They will use the SEC's complaint as evidence that Stormpay is "illegally" holding some $50 million of "their money". The loudest defenders will not be the people who made money, but those who "earned" a small amount of money. When faced with the choice of choosing between changing their beliefs about 12Daily Pro to conform with the SEC complaint, or to continue with defending Ms. Johnson et. al. proponents of cognitive dissonance will predict that individuals who had materially less at stake in the scheme will find it easier to re-arrange their beliefs in a continued defence of the economic viability of the scheme than those who had much more at stake.
This phenomena was first investigated by Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith in 1959. In short, Festinger and Carlsmith showed that a person who received a $1 reward to mislead someone believed themselves more than a person who received a $20 reward to do the same thing. At the $20 level, the task was clear: just lie, get paid and move on. But since one's integrity is usually not for sale at $1, those people had to convince themselves of the lie also!
Comments
i want to know the day by day progress of 12dailypro investigation which url i go daily or for some time to get full investigation out put
Posted by: mubashir | March 11, 2006 2:43 PM