Cases of pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes or other similar financial frauds that have not collapsed or ended up with those responsible in jail are hardly counted.
Bogota rancher Felipe Rocha, author of one of the most recent millionaire scams in Colombia, turned himself in to the Prosecutor's Office on Tuesday, following a judge's decision to issue an arrest warrant against the businessman for the crime of mass aggravated fraud.
Now one of the questions in the case of the fake Achury Viejo iron cattle is how it was possible that so many investors from high society, with financial studies and sufficient information, have fallen without hardly blinking.
For the unit in charge of inspecting cases of illegal deposits of the Financial Superintendence (SFC), 2023 was one of the most hectic years.
The regulatory entity intervened with precautionary measures in 13 businesses that affected some 604 people who believed they were depositing their money in some magical invention that would provide them with a permanent double-digit monetary return.
As advertising on social media spreads more quickly, Torres's job becomes more complicated.
Although at first glance the number of victims seems marginal, José Camilo Torres, director of control and illegal exercise of financial activity at the SFC, completes the picture: “Last year was very strong.
The value raised was 21.3 billion pesos (about five million euros).
These are figures of the cases where there has been an intervention process.
But we know that in these businesses more than 4,000 people have come forward to claim amounts close to 100,000 million pesos.”
The dimension of businesses like those of Rocha or the famous DMG, he adds, is much greater.
The classic pyramid scheme promises high returns to the precursors of the structure and to investors who sign up early for the project.
The sustainability of the pyramid, in theory, depends on the deposits of new clients that come in to cover possible withdrawals of previous funds.
In the case of Felipe Rocha, the exceptional benefits were mediated by the breeding and sale of a lot with non-existent livestock.
In this case, there has been talk of a financial hole that has ranged between 70,000 and 16,500 million pesos, and that has affected 85 people, among whom were several members of his inner circle.
“The Colombian by nature, and especially the upper class,” explains Fabio Humar, lawyer for around thirty of the victims, “has the
golden ticket
mentality .”
He says it in reference to the golden coupons in the children's story
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
: “The upper class believes, for some reason, that they have discovered a profitable business that no one else has found, and that the investors are a select few.” .
The problem is not limited to Colombia alone.
In the American case, the scam of Bernard L. Madoff is obvious, who duped 40,000 people out of some 65 billion dollars since the 1980s.
Among them were dozens of accredited and well-connected investors worldwide who, according to Marie Springer, the author of
The Politics of Ponzi Schemes: History, Theory and Policy
, would have bet their money without having much time to doubt or audit the system. .
The biggest recent scam in Colombia was named with the initials of its designer: DMG (David Murcia Guzmán).
His story forced President Álvaro Uribe to decree a state of emergency to respond to more than 500,000 people affected by a fraud worth more than 2,000 million dollars at the time.
Among them were two relatives of the Economics professor at the Universidad de los Andes Daniel Mejía.
“Two professionals from the National University.
University professors who were neither economists nor experts in business administration, but neither were they low-income people in a remote area,” Mejía clarifies.
The academic, who together with three other researchers published a study on DMG, recalls that 80% of DMG investors in Colombia lost their entire investment: “Many of the amounts that people invested were billions of pesos.
“They were not low-income people that one would imagine had little access to formal banking.”
This is another factor that Humar lists, in the absence of more literature on the subject in Colombia, to try to understand the social phenomenon: “The financial market is not robust, nor does it offer interesting investment options.
“Any person with surplus liquidity who wants to invest has few possibilities, very unattractive.”
He details that CDTs (Certificate of Term Deposit), investment funds or savings accounts are not channels with a wide menu of good returns.
“That is why, in part, when these schemes appear that at first glance are novel and offer attractive benefits, it is normal for people to fall for it,” he concludes.
Legal psychologist Mayerly Estrada, however, draws attention to the need to avoid generalizations when characterizing both scammers and their victims.
“The media sometimes focuses on cases that involve people with greater economic resources.
As they have received more education, more financial and university education, more responsible or cautious behavior is expected of them.
But in reality the same thing happens with politicians, who despite their privileges, are the most prone to corruption.”
In any case, the fundamental explanation for why thousands of elite Colombians continue to fall into these frauds rests less and less on ignorance.
Consequently, when cases like Rocha's occur again, a congenital trait of the human condition always emerges: greed.
Scholar Marie Springer asks in her book: “If [Madoff] received 150 years in prison, why would anyone start a Ponzi scheme and think they can get away with it?”
But there are.
“They think they are smarter.”
Fabio Humar takes a closer look and puts a local trait on the table: “In Colombia, drug trafficking, with its ethics and aesthetics, left us the deadly imprint that easy money is possible.
“Being alive is enough.”
Karina Cruz, director of business initiatives and the private sector at the NGO Transparency for Colombia, argues that any level of financial literacy fades under the influence of certain cultural traits.
For the researcher, the social fabric in Colombia is permeated by “low levels of ethical and moral principles”: “The complicity between low ethical levels and the idea of an easy life coming from the culture of drug trafficking.
That, added to the absence of the State in some areas of the country, are the breeding ground for these pyramids to gain importance in economic and social life.”
For José Camilo Torres, socioeconomic explanations do not weigh in his work as a financial sleuth.
His speech reflects all the concerns that have arisen as a result of new digital scams and the complexity of unmasking increasingly sophisticated schemes: “As a basic rule, you must always be very careful with high rate offers in business.
But even for the most educated people, there are businesses built on structures that do not allow us to easily identify what is underneath.
There are apparently legal account contracts, hidden managers and people who have really become professionals in deceiving and scamming.”
Subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia and
here to the WhatsApp channel
, and receive all the key information on current events in the country.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_