“I am a religious person, and I thought that people would be honest and I wanted to invest some money in the campaign,” a Kazakhstani man who invested his money in the Ponzi scheme, Mudarabah Capital, explained his behaviour. The scheme has duped 200 persons. Why did they rise to the ‘religious’ bait so easily?
Lucrative Faith
Meirzhan Turebayev, a known Kazakhstan-based Viner, has 3.3 million followers on Instagram. He is known for short funny videos – vines – about police officers. Later on, his spouse and he started to make vines about their family life. He posted stories about religion on his account from time to time. In offline life, Turebayev started to make sausage “Meirzhachnaya”, which he actively promoted as a halal product among his audience.
In 2022, the trial of Turebayev and 11 defendants began. They were charged with creating the Mudarabah Capital scheme. The defendants offered to people to earn money by “lucrative Islamic investments”; the company positioned itself as a financial (investment) institution compliant with the laws of Islam. According to the prosecution, it created a false impression about the reliability of the project among victims.
In 2023, Turebayev and others were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The victims in this case fell into line with the 2022 victims of Ponzi schemes in Kazakhstan. According to official data, there were over four thousand (43 criminal cases) of such victims. Since early 2023, the Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) has detected over 22 Ponzi schemes.
Some of them also use the “religious theme”. For example, there is an advertisement on the internet, which promises halal income – by investing 20,500 tenge (45.7 dollars) and earning 365,000 per cent per annum. Kazakhstanis find this offer very attractive because banks offer maximum 16.3 per cent on flexible deposits.
Why people don’t find such offers with thousand per cent profits suspicious?
Rules of con artists
Zhanna Kantarbaeva, a religious scholar, senior lecturer of the Kazakh National University, candidate of philosophical sciences, said that the basis of any religion is the absolute trust, therefore con artists can easily abuse this trust and put their meaning to the theme of religion. Such concepts as faith, sacred canons are easily manipulated because they are often abstract to unaware people.“Victims are confident that religious people cannot deceive, and can be trusted,” Kantarbaeva said. “We entrust our fate to god. And it’s good when you feel trust, but con artists reverse these concepts: they use religiosity as a mask.”
One more tool of con artists is addressing such basic human need as desire to find financial stability.
“If we speak about Ponzi schemes, people want to have even more profit, not just pay off debts, but also purchase something, which was unaffordable previously. Victims of Ponzi schemes have such misleading thoughts in their minds,” Kantarbaeva said.
Valeria Kononova, marketing specialist of international IT corporation, has the same opinion, “If we speak about instincts played on by all marketing professionals of the world, what else but faith causes the deepest, sincere feelings in a human?”
According to her, one should speak the same language with a customer to sell the good, service or idea. Questions of faith are familiar since childhood, discussed within the family with those trusted the most.
“Using the symbols or references to religion, one should not put out a few feelers to catch attention. So it turns out that it’s not religion or faith that sells, but goods and services ‘under a different sauce’”, Kononova said.
How not to get caught?
To resist manipulators, it is important to use critical thinking and wonder what are the purposes pursued by a person using religious images, theme. Is he really religious, does he want to raise a listener’s awareness about the core of religion, or does he use religiosity as a mask?“One needs to be aware that a really religious person would hardly be related to investment and money deposits. A religious person would not play financial games, manipulate feelings. You should avoid both acquaintances and strangers who are too active in involving you into any entity,” Zhanna Kantarbaeva said.
Speaking about official recommendations, according to FMA representatives, people must grow suspicious when easy money and 200-300 per cent profit are promised.
“There is no such profit, and earnings are payable from contributions paid by other participants. You should check if the company is registered with justice authorities, tax authorities of Kazakhstan, if it is licensed by a financial regulatory authority for fund raising. You can do it on the websites of the Agency for Regulation of the Financial Market and ‘Astana’ International Financial Centre, which publish the names of companies,” said Andrei Davydov, deputy head of FMA office.
Marketing specialist Valeria Kononova believes that information noise will soon absorb the ‘religious’ trend and make the attempts to catch attention by religion invisible to the brain.
“What is a true faith? It remains within us,” the marketing specialist said.
Main illustration: Freepik.com