{"id":238357,"date":"2021-05-02T02:20:14","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T06:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=238357"},"modified":"2021-05-02T03:19:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T07:19:03","slug":"trust-investing-in-cuba-opportunity-or-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/trust-investing-in-cuba-opportunity-or-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Trust Investing in Cuba: opportunity or scam?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have been connected to the Internet in the last year, it is very likely that within your network of contacts on Facebook and WhatsApp you have come across a member of the controversial Trust Investing \u201ccrypto asset investment platform.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Under the slogan \u201cIn Trust I trust,\u201d digital finance enthusiasts seek to multiply profits and add their acquaintances to what seems to be a solution\u2014almost magical\u2014to achieve financial freedom: the promise of more than 200% return on the initial investment in 10 months.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Cuba, with an economy increasingly affected and aggravated by the <\/span>COVID-19<\/span><\/a> pandemic, the promise of generating passive income seduces thousands of people, who have joined Trust Investing. Several <\/span>experts<\/span><\/a> have described the scheme as a Ponzi scam, alluding to the famous case of Carlos Ponzi in the United States, who paid his initial investors with the money of the new investors. A system that is mathematically doomed to failure once people run out of the pyramid.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although there are no official figures, the \u201ctrusters\u201d themselves, as the members of this community call themselves, calculate in their groups in the digital media that more than 70,000 people in Cuba are linked to this informal business system that has no regulations, and whose legal implications are a gray area on the island.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, earlier this week it was announced that Ruslan Concepci\u00f3n, director and principal promoter of Trust Investing in Cuba, <\/span>was detained at the Havana airport<\/span><\/a> when he was preparing to travel to Russia, after border agents considered that the money he was traveling with did not come from a legal source.<\/span><\/p>\n

But is Trust Investing really a Ponzi scheme? If it were a scam, why do its members continue to generate profits and more and more followers join the pyramid? How does everything really work?<\/span><\/p>\n

At least in two countries, <\/span>Panama<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Spain<\/span><\/a>, scam alerts have been issued for this \u201ccompany,\u201d whose actual activities are not clear and which has a proselytizing work system.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the aim of investigating more about an extremely delicate topic that arouses so many passions, <\/span>OnCuba<\/b> spoke with experts in Economics and Social Sciences, and we compiled a series of documents and official sources on international trading that serve as a starting point to begin to understand the ABC of Trust Investing in Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Trust Investing?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Some call it a \u201cfraternity\u201d of people who trust and bet on a company of dubious provenance and who often do not allow criticism or skeptical thinking about its budgets.<\/span><\/p>\n

On its <\/span>website<\/span><\/a>, Trust Investing describes itself as a \u201ccrypto asset management company in the most daring markets\u201d that has \u201ca high liquidity index\u201d and offers its clients and partners \u201cthe opportunity to be an integral part of this innovative market.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

However, various verifications at our fingertips generate, to say the least, doubts.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/stacyherbert\/status\/1386397786816487426?s=20<\/p>\n

For starters, the official business address ranges from Panama to Estonia, but physical locations don\u2019t exist outside the virtual world. In addition, they claim to be associated with BDL Bank, we weren\u2019t able to verify the existence of such a bank, and the address attributed to it belongs to a hotel.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Panamanian government itself <\/span>publicly warned<\/span><\/a> in June 2020 that Trust Investing was not authorized to operate in the stock market or provide investment services, something the company claims to do with investors\u2019 money.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Spain, <\/span>it is not authorized<\/span><\/a> to offer financial services either, despite the fact that its founders are Spanish, according to the National Securities Market Commission.<\/span><\/p>\n

But then, where does the money come from with which investors\u2019 profits are paid? The answer seems to indicate that it comes from the new investors, as would happen in a classic Ponzi scheme; this is confirmed by the <\/span>Tulip Research<\/span><\/a> fraudulent activity analysis firm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ponzi scheme<\/span><\/p>\n

How to discover it?<\/span><\/p>\n

They promise benefits way above the market average<\/span><\/p>\n

The company has very few documents on its services<\/span><\/p>\n

The company is not registered or controlled by a trustworthy regulator<\/span><\/p>\n

Its principal target are investors who have little financial knowledge<\/span><\/p>\n

There will always exist an investor who is going to easily collect what was promised, to generate trust<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: brokeronline.es<\/span><\/p>\n

Without having clear company addresses or documents that prove what they do, some of the company executives mention in videos circulating on social networks that, in addition to trading with cryptocurrencies, they operate an emerald mine in Brazil and have investments in an alleged renewable energy company.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trust Investing is also a \u201ccompany\u201d whose founder and director, Diego Chaves, has been involved in at least five legal proceedings, some of them from the financial world, according to the <\/span>Brokeronline portal<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Juan Alejandro Triana, professor at the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Havana, confirms that when we talk about Trust Investing operations, there is no doubt that we are facing a Ponzi scheme:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn a few years it will be discovered that it is a financial scam. What\u2019s going on? The people who have created it have been quite intelligent, which is why it is in good health to date. This is not the same as the first pyramid schemes that Carlos Ponzi created at the beginning of the 20th century to scam people, but it has been optimized along with the vertiginous development of the financial market and financial engineering in the world,\u201d explained Triana.<\/span><\/p>\n

So why do people keep logging in if it could be considered a scam?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis investment fund is driven by a system of very intelligent rules that forces people to reinvest, that is, to buy another investment package,\u201d Triana explained to <\/span>OnCuba<\/b>. \u201cBecause if you keep investing in the same initial package, the monthly returns will decrease. That is, for a third investment of $100, [the person] would pay 19, 18 percent. All this has as a result that people have done very well, they decide to invest more and do better networking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Triana estimates that in Cuba there are between 60,000 and 70,000 people who are already investing in Trust Investing. Much higher numbers of Cubans involved in this system have been handled in social media groups.<\/span><\/p>\n

Criptomonedas en Cuba: la fiebre del oro digital<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n