I attended an "Investment Opportunity in Cryptocurrency" in Venezuela in my little town <200k population, it turned out to be a MLM and of course they have an ICO. It's giving Crypto a bad rep here, and how I'm fighting it.

TL;DR "Trading company" that turned out to be a MLM/Pyramid Scheme visits little town in Venezuela and scams the hell out of it, people can't get their funds out. only if they use their ICO. I got cookies out of it

Little introdcution of me, I'm Victor, I'm new here, I have been doing charity thanks to crypto, @acidyo messaged me on reddit about posting my work here, I love writing this long post/rants that on reddit might not do that well, so STEEMIT seems appropiate.

and now to the history

My dad knows that I'm into technology in general, so when a friend from his work invited him to the next "big thing in Cryptocurrency" and that he cannot "miss out in this big business opportunity" A couple of flags were raised, but I decided to go with him.

Enter "Forcount", the meeting was in the city's country club with over 100+ people, a couple of close friends were there, I was immediately congratulated because I was not missing out on the next big thing in Crypto, even bigger flags were raised, I told my dad

$Victor -Watch this being this big ass pyramid scheme

$Dad -I don't think so, Mr. BigBucks, and Ms.ChainOwner is here.

And he was right, well-off people were there, people with money, shop owners, dealership owners, people from wealthy families, so I was a little suspicious about that, anyways I went a took sit while my dad was talking with the girl that invited him, he came back I asked what she said.

$Victor -So, what did she said to you? something along the lines that you will love this, and cannot miss this business opportunity?

$Dad -Yeah pretty much that.

$Victor -This is going to be a big ass pyramid.

$Dad -Probably, listen, the presentation is starting.

So then he came, this "Black diamond rank" guy from Costa Rica, to give us the presentation, he started by cheering everyone up telling a couple jokes and give a round of applause to this guy from our city because he just reached the "Emerald" ranking.

The presentation began, he started talking about how no believed in the internet and in social media, how companies were going bankrupt because they were stuck in their old ways. bla bla bla, yada yada yada, everything about that was true. he talked about how if you invested in apple x years ago you should have been richer you can imagine, but no-one believed in Steve Jobs, because he was this crazy tech guy with crazy ideas, and then... he said, let me present your next opportunity to be rich af boi and how to have a rich guy mentality.

Introducing "Forcount"

He began talking about this company that started in 2015 (even tho the domain was registered in 2017) specialized in "cryptocurrency trading" Big quotes here, he said that the company has the best traders in the world and how can they work for you, using their investment plans!. He then gave a brief intro to cryptocurrency (Litecoin) how can you be your bank yada yada...

and then oh boy, he began explaining the investment plans, how Litecoin used to be worh $3 and had an ATH of $100 and how in december it was expected to go over $1000.

So the investments plans are pretty much an "interest rate" from 0.01% to 3% from the profits made by their world-class traders make on your investment.
IT BEGINS

and how if you do a direct referral to someone you make from 5% to 10% on their investment
My dad and I started cracking up internally... and then this slide came on.
oh boy...

That's your "NETWORK", and it works depending on your initial investment, and how your right or left "NETWORK" is doing. I'm not going get into detail because it was confusing af.
Oh and the ICO, THEY FUCKING HAVE AN ICO. It's called Mindex Coin and it was going to be the next Bitcoin. and guess what. ALL YOUR PROFITS WILL BE PAID IN THIS MINDEXCOIN (MIC)
They have other investment plans like renting mining rigs and other stuff, oh and of course they have a ranking system.

and you get bonuses, ofc for reaching this the company pays you extra.

example Black Diamond, they give a $10.000 extra enough to pay the lease of a rolls and a mansion.

The presentation ended, people were hyped af. I talked out my friends out of that shit, they gave away cookies and tea for all attendess (Cookies were 10/10 the only good thing to come out of that reunion.

THE AFTERMATH

I started working with a friend giving people basic courses about crypto (what's a wallet how to use it, what's a whitepaper) and in the course there were a couple attendees that invested in ShitCount, I showed them John Oliver video on MLMs and they told me they want to get their Litecoins and DASH out of that shit. and surprise surprise, you cannot withdraw your funds, only after 3 months and you can only withdraw the profits made with your investment, boy they were pissed.

A couple weeks pass by and news came, the Puerto Rican Black diamond was leaving the company, the Emerald local guy is under fire from everyone because they can't withdraw funds and is now exit scamming to Spain.
And now everytime that I talk about someone about Crypto they think is about that forcount shit because everyone thinks I want to recruit them to my "network".
on the plus side, a lot more people are interested in crypto general and informing themselves about it. Here's a pic from the last course we taught!.

Sorry for the long read.