By Garwin Davis, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU: LURED BY the promise of making huge profits from a new get-rich-quick scheme, thousands of residents turned out at the St. John's Methodist Church in Montego Bay on Sunday night for a meeting with organisers.
The meeting, chaired by Winston Gilling, operator of the Revolving Partner Plan, an informal partnership agreement that guarantees hefty returns on minimal investments, was called to explain to prospective investors, details of the scheme following a report in The Sun-day Gleaner.
"We were not looking for any kind of publicity but you guys have ruined all of that," said Mr. Gilling in response to the story which highlighted his partnership plan.
Mr. Gilling also noted that he had been getting so much positive feedback that his office was hard-pressed to deal with all of those who were interested. "People had some concern following the release of the article and so we had to clear the air," he said.
Mr. Gilling, who explained that he has had no formal training in economics and that he had copied the idea for his partnership plan from the Internet. He added that he had perfected the concept to where it was now, his plan and one that had all the ingredients for success.
In a complete reversal, however, from his earlier statements where he guaranteed that after a 12-week period, an investment of $2,000 would yield $10,000 and $6,000 would bring in $40,000, Mr. Gilling now says that there is no way he could guarantee a time limit for investment returns.
"Based on our projections, we identify 12 weeks as a reasonable time for returns to be made but it could be earlier as well as later," he said. "In a worst case scenario it could even be up to a year."
Mr. Gilling said that the scheme has a business account at CIBC with a working capital of $4 million. He noted that the largest deposit to date is $150,000.
He also said his organisation was not exactly sure on how to handle deposits exceeding one million dollars, saying the plan was designed mainly to accommodate small deposits.
Errol Samuels, head of the Fraud Squad, said that his unit had not received any complaints regarding the scheme. "Unless there are complaints, there is not much we can do," he said. "It does sound a lot like the pyramid scheme from which somebody is bound to get left."
