But pyramid schemes are illegal and the vast majority of their participants lose money.
Pyramid schemes in post-communist Albania wrecked the economy, sparked riots and helped to destroy the government.
This week he and the interim government came to blows over a plan to regulate pyramid schemes.
Certain closed-end funds were little more than pyramid schemes, and certain equities were run up to unrealistic levels.
The finance minister, Arben Malaj, insists that a Socialist government would not bail out depositors in pyramid schemes.
Since 1997, the FTC has brought 13 separate cases against alleged pyramid schemes.
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The Department of Trade and Industry says that pyramid schemes are unusual in Britain, and one aimed at women seems a novelty.
Some of these corporations are basically little more than pyramid schemes.
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At the end of last year the government was shaken by the anger of thousands of savers bilked when several pyramid schemes collapsed.
Still, Albania's new-found if precarious stability has brought back Greek and Italian investors who shut up shop after the pyramid schemes collapsed three years ago.
While MLMs and pyramid schemes both use customers as distributors for their products, the key difference is that pyramid schemes sell token items, something that nobody actually wants.
After the collapse of the pyramid schemes many Colombians, who are anyway wary of banks, may resort to keeping their money under the mattress again, thereby exacerbating the crisis.
And, Steve, that massive Ponzi scheme that you and Jim were just talking about, sometimes people call this robbing Peter to pay Paul, or a shell game, pyramid schemes, or close relatives.
Herbalife and other MLMs, such as NuSkin and Usana, however, sell products that people do buy, and while there may be some moral qualms about MLMs and pyramid schemes, US courts have ruled that MLMs are completely legal.
Now Mr Ceka is embarking on the much tougher task of pacifying Albania's southern towns, where the anarchy unleashed by the collapse of pyramid investment schemes turned into rule by criminals.
Things could rapidly boil over if Mr Gligorov, whose weak coalition has been hit by scandal over collapsing pyramid investment schemes (like those that did for Mr Berisha in Albania), has to call an election.
Some of the pyramid problems could be avoided if developed-world pension schemes invested in those emerging markets with more favourable demographic trends.
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The consumer groups involved in the exercise each spent three hours scouring the internet for bogus homeworking schemes, business opportunities, lotteries, chain letters and pyramid investment plans - known as cyber-scams.
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