Island and the fact that they are both illegal and dangerous.

The reaction to the stories has been surprising, with people rushing to the defence of the schemes, which range from claims that pyramid schemes are no different from mutual funds to the belief that the schemes are part of a white conspiracy to prevent black Bermudians from making money.

Pyramid schemes are illegal, and rightly so, for two reasons. The first is people are being asked to "invest'' in something which has no tangible value.

In that sense it is different from buying a house, stock in a company or an antique book or piece of furniture. In all of these cases, there is a risk that the good or stock will lose value. But it is a real thing, with a value.

A pyramid scheme, in which you give money to someone else and are then required to go out and find people to give money to you has no value; once you have given your money away, you will never get it back and you have nothing tangible to show for it.

That leads to the second problem. Once you have invested in the scheme, you must find others to join in too. Because you must find more than one person to make money, it is mathematically certain to fail. The last people to join in will lose their money.

The US Better Business Bureau has stated: "Pyramids focus on recruiting new members, instead of on selling real products.

"To work, a true pyramid must grow exponentially, eventually outstripping the entire population.

"Mathematical experts note that the vast majority of people who join a pyramid never can recoup more than they paid in. When pyramids fail to recruit enough new members, the flow of money stops, and the pyramid topples like a house of cards.'' If a pyramid scheme began in Bermuda with one person convincing two others to give him or her $100 each and those two people then had to go out the next day to recruit four people between them to give them money, and those four people had to find eight recruits the next day, it would take about 16 days before Bermuda's population was exhausted, leaving 40,000 people trying to find nonexistent recruits. Most of those people would lose their money.

That is why the scheme, built on a fraudulent premise, is illegal. A lot of people are guaranteed, not to make quick and easy money, but to lose what they have put in.

If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Your money will be a lot safer in a bank or deposit company -- and you could make more money.