Federal authorities in the U.S. have uncovered $20 million loot believed to have been stolen from victims of a Ponzi scheme similar to the Mavrodi Mondial Movement (MMM) scheme.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said, on Monday, the cash was found stashed in a mattress during a raid on a Massachusetts apartment.
The money is believed to be linked to a $1 billion pyramid scheme involving TelexFree, a Massachusetts-headquartered company that claimed to provide Internet phone services.
Authorities allege that it was a pyramid scheme that operated from January 2012 to March 2014.
“TelexFree purported to aggressively market its VOIP [voice over internet protocol] service by recruiting thousands of ‘promoters’ to post ads for the product on the Internet,” the Department of Justice said in a statement on its website.
According to the Department of Justice, the promoters were required to buy into the company at a price, after which they were to be compensated by TelexFree, “under a complex compensation structure, on a weekly basis so long as they posted ads for TelexFree’s VOIP service on the Internet.”
The cash stash was discovered earlier this month when police raided the apartment of one Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha, 28, in Westborough.
He was, subsequently, arrested and charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering.
Authorities said the scheme reported sales of $1.02 billion in 2013, but majority of the revenue came from people who bought into the scheme.
The MMM scheme, similarly, suspended its activities in Nigeria last December, after authorities voiced concerns about the genuineness of the scheme, leaving millions of naira in subscribers’ fund trapped.
Recent attempts by the scheme to reopen have been largely unsuccessful, amid speculations that it’s local promoters have fled the country.
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