A Pyramid Scheme is the dishonest counterpart of a Multi-level marketing program. The emphasis is placed on quickly recruiting others to invest in the product or chain letter who will in turn recruit still others. The resulting awesome cash flow is guaranteed to make you a wealthy person in a very few days or months. Let's look at that math a bit. To make it clearer we won't look at the money aspect at all - just what the scam artist hopes you WON'T do.
Money makes a powerful blindfold.
Say you are asked to recruit six other participants in a chain letter. This has been fun, but tragically, those most at risk for this scheme are those who do not understand the fallacy of exponential growth in a marketing situation. The credit reporting agencies are not perfect. Sometimes they do have erroneous data on their books. They recognize this fact and have put procedures in place for consumers to review and correct the information on file.