The term pyra­mid scheme has been thrown around a lot re­cent­ly by al­most every­one–from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to the or­di­nary man on the street.

Since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced the clo­sure of mul­ti­ple sec­tors of the econ­o­my, start­ing in late March, many peo­ple have found them­selves on the bread­line, des­per­ate for mon­ey to sup­port their fam­i­lies.

Sev­er­al months ago, groups be­gan spring­ing up both in Trinidad and To­ba­go, promis­ing po­ten­tial mem­bers that if they in­vest­ed be­tween $300 to $15,000, they could see their in­vest­ment mul­ti­ply by eight times in most cas­es. The caveat: Bring in two oth­er peo­ple to in­vest.

In the most re­cent case in­volv­ing a group in La Hor­quet­ta called DSS "Drugs Sou Sou", where po­lice seized $22 mil­lion, the group ad­mins showed mul­ti­ple di­a­grams and videos ex­plain­ing the "lev­els" of the in­vest­ments and en­cour­aged mem­bers to down­load the app Telegram so the size re­stric­tion of What­sApp groups would not ap­ply. The groups grew in pop­u­lar­i­ty and were called every­thing from "Each one, help one," to "Bless­ings Cir­cle," to "Bless­ing Flower," to "Hy­brid Sou Sou" and many more.

With­in weeks, many of these groups crashed, for the sim­ple rea­son that these types of struc­tures are not sus­tain­able. Re­gard­less of the name or ti­tle of these groups, they are noth­ing more than naked pyra­mid schemes.

Defin­ing the pyra­mid scheme

Ac­cord­ing to How­Stuff­Works.com, a naked pyra­mid scheme is where peo­ple in­vest mon­ey and make sev­er­al times the amount with­out do­ing any­thing.

For ex­am­ple, one per­son can in­vite ten peo­ple to join an in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty. "The ten re­cruits each pay the re­cruiter $100. The re­cruiter now tells them to go out and re­cruit ten more peo­ple to do the same. If each re­cruit is suc­cess­ful, they'll all end up with $900 in prof­it from a $100 in­vest­ment," How­Stuff­Works says.

In lo­cal groups, the $100 fee in this ex­am­ple refers to the "ad­min fee."

But as How­Stuff­Works points out, the prob­lem is the con­stant need for new in­vestors to pay the old­er in­vestors.

"Even­tu­al­ly, there won't be enough re­cruits at the bot­tom of the pyra­mid to sup­port the lev­el above it. That's when the pyra­mid top­ples, and every­one at the bot­tom los­es their in­vest­ment," How­Stuff­Works says.

Even as these lo­cal groups fail, more pop up dai­ly. Ad­mins have now turned to the Face­book Mar­ket­place hop­ing to woo new 'in­vestors'.

By Fri­day night, a pe­ti­tion was start­ed on Change.Org in sup­port of DSS. Two hours af­ter it was cre­at­ed, it had al­ready gath­ered 1,500 sig­na­tures.

In sup­port of the sou-sou

But for every voice in sup­port of DSS' op­er­a­tions, which the com­mis­sion­er has la­belled a pyra­mid scheme, there have been ten more speak­ing out in de­fence of the tra­di­tion­al sou-sou.

The Ox­ford Dic­tio­nary de­fines a tra­di­tion­al sou-sou as "a co­op­er­a­tive sav­ings sys­tem in which each per­son con­tributes the same fixed amount each week, and the whole amount is tak­en by a dif­fer­ent mem­ber each time."

The tra­di­tion­al sou-sou, an in­for­mal sav­ings arrange­ment among friends and close as­so­ciates, has been a fea­ture of the Caribbean so­ci­ety for decades. How­ev­er, sou-sou funds are not ac­cept­ed as a source of in­come by the bank­ing in­sti­tu­tion in T&T.

A tra­di­tion for 25 years

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to one woman who has car­ried on the tra­di­tion for over 25 years.

See­ta (*not her re­al name) has been run­ning a tra­di­tion­al sou-sou for close to three decades.

At her home in cen­tral Trinidad, See­ta told the Sun­day Guardian that she got in­to a sou-sou be­cause as a sin­gle, self-em­ployed moth­er, she was turned down mul­ti­ple times for bank loans.

"The bank want­ed me to have a nor­mal job, I didn't have that and I didn't have col­lat­er­al so every time I went for a loan, they used to say no," she re­called.

She said she was in her late 40s when she de­cid­ed to pull on the knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence of her un­cles who did sou-sous when she was a child in Cunu­pia.

"I asked some of my fam­i­ly and some friends if they want­ed to join and that is how we start­ed," she said.

Now 75, See­ta en­joys every com­fort in her home–in­clud­ing a swim­ming pool, a lux­u­ry she could bare­ly imag­ine as a ven­dor and sin­gle moth­er with no for­mal ed­u­ca­tion.

When she first start­ed her sou-sou, mem­bers paid $100 'a hand' a week. That in­creased over the years and got as high as $400 'a hand'.

"I take my sou-sou hands and do plen­ty of things in my house, build my own pool and fix my place prop­er­ly. I teach my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren the same thing, so they al­so throw hands and build their homes, buy cars and some even pay for their own wed­dings."

She is proud to have car­ried on this tra­di­tion hand­ed down from her rel­a­tives and her on­ly re­gret is not start­ing her own sou-sou ear­li­er on in life.

Un­like the "ad­mins" of the pyra­mid schemes that are now dis­guised as sou-sous, See­ta said her fee for keep­ing the mon­ey and run­ning the sou-sou was a mere $50 a week.

"Every week, when one per­son col­lect­ing their hand, I would take out $50 from that hand for my­self. I nev­er take out from every­body when they pay their hand, just one $50 a week from the hand that I was giv­ing out."

The biggest sou-sou she did was a $14,000-a-week pay­out, which ran for an en­tire year.

The vic­tim of a home in­va­sion sev­er­al years ago, See­ta said a masked, armed man broke in­to her home and threat­ened to kill her for the sou-sou mon­ey.

The man took off with about $5,000 which she had to re­place her­self to pay out the hand that was due that week.

Once sev­er­al years ago, See­ta was al­so conned out of a sou-sou hand by a work­man who was do­ing con­struc­tion at her home. She said the man begged to join the sou-sou so he could pur­chase a car. When he was giv­en a hand just weeks in­to the sou-sou, the man stopped pay­ing and See­ta was left to foot the bill.

These are some of the risks one faces when run­ning the sou-sou, which de­pends on the hon­esty and good­will of the peo­ple in­volved.

But even with those dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ences, See­ta does not re­gret her de­ci­sion to start her own sou-sou.

If she does de­cide to con­tin­ue her sou-sou, See­ta said she will be very se­lec­tive about those she al­lows to join.

See­ta has been fol­low­ing the sto­ries of the crashed pyra­mid schemes that have emerged over the past few months ad­vis­es any­one think­ing of join­ing groups that promise a quick mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of your mon­ey: "Don't do it."

"Choose care­ful­ly who you in­vest with...You should do it if it's a re­al one, but join with peo­ple and take peo­ple who you trust, you can't take each and every­body, it has to be peo­ple you trust," she said.

'Sou-sou helped me build my own home'

Sin­gle moth­er Camille says sev­er­al years ago when she got di­vorced, she turned to the bank seek­ing a loan or a mort­gage to start her own home.

How­ev­er, since she was em­ployed as a con­tract work­er and did not have per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment, Camille's re­quest was turned down.

"They are ba­si­cal­ly say­ing if you have a con­tract, which most peo­ple have, then you can on­ly get a loan based on that, it is a lot of run around, a lot of headache," Camille said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

She said she turned to a sou-sou. Af­ter three years, she has been able to com­plete ma­jor con­struc­tion on her home, do­ing it in sev­er­al stages.

"The sou-sou ran for prob­a­bly about three years and every time I got my hand, I built, I built a bit of the house, and I will con­tin­ue to do that once a sou-sou comes up. I will join and when I col­lect my hand, I will build a bit of the house and know that I don't have to pay these ex­or­bi­tant fees to the bank."

Camille said she will con­tin­ue par­tic­i­pat­ing in sou-sous in its tra­di­tion­al form.

"I think it is a le­git­i­mate form of sup­port, it's not a loan, you're in a sys­tem based on trust and it is le­git­i­mate and it has a his­to­ry, so I to­tal­ly be­lieve in it, es­pe­cial­ly for women."