One social media video features members buying new cars, enjoying luxury holidays, and constructing new homes. Basically selling a lifestyle that they promised to give if you join the scheme.

One of the victims, Regina based in South Africa, says that she received video clips of people getting money, driving Ford Rangers, BMW, and Mercedes cars thus convincing her that the scheme was real. However, after investing all her savings she received a paltry Ksh300 after three months.

The scheme described itself as the fastest-growing crowd marketing company in the world. The BBC found out that Crowd1 did not have any partnership with Affilgo and Miggster as they claimed on their website.

The BBC team invested in the Titanium package costing Ksh300,000 and only got about an hour’s long video content. Upon further investigation, they found out that most of the educational content was plagiarized from other authors or available on the internet.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has issued a warning in September cautioning the public that Crowd1 was a pyramid scheme. In addition, Kenya’s financial regulators had warned the public against engaging in fraudulent financial schemes.  

In fact, the governments in Mauritius, the Philippines, Paraguay, New Zealand, Vietnam, Burundi, Namibia, Gabon, and Ivory Coast have all issued warnings against Crowd1 or banned it outright.