Women guilty of €26m pyramid scheme

A band of "greedy" women masterminded a £21m (€26m) get-rich-quick scheme — fleecing at least 10,000 victims.

The group used mass e-mails and “champagne celebration nights” to encourage women to “beg, borrow or steal” £3,000 to invest in the scam.

Victims were lured by the promise they would receive a £24,000 payout when they reached the top of their pyramid chart, with organisers promising they “could not lose”.

The scheme, called Give and Take (G&T), quickly spread from Bath and Bristol to Gloucestershire, Somerset, Devon and Wales between May 2008 and April 2009.

Committee members behind the scheme pocketed up to £92,000 each, while as many as 88% of their victims lost between £3,000 and £15,000.

G&T, also known as Key to a Fortune, was kept under a veil of secrecy as members were forbidden from writing about it to protect the organisers.

But the pyramid was uncovered when a disgruntled employer in Bristol complained to Trading Standards that it was being promoted in his workplace.

Eleven women, aged between 34 and 69, became the first in the UK to be prosecuted for such a scheme, under new legislation in the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Act 2008.

Six of the women have been sentenced, while a further three will be sentenced at Bristol Crown Court in October.

One woman was acquitted of promoting the scheme, while two juries failed to reach a verdict for another woman on the same charge.