The Overnight Cash System by Simon Johansson and Orlando Batista

In 2005/2006 several thousand people each lost thousands of dollars by getting involved in a pyramid scheme called the Prosperity Automated System (or PAS for short).

It was what is known as a "1-Up" system i.e. you join and pay your "sponsor" $3,000 and then when you make a sale, the person you referred pays your sponsor $3,000. You are then said to have "qualified" as you have passed 1 sale up (1-Up, get it?).

Simon Johansson was heavily involved in promoting PAS along with his partner at the time who called himself Dr Lieven Van Neste.

They made hundreds of thousands of dollars out of this scheme and at one time it was rumoured that Van Neste had personally pocketed over 1 million dollars.

Everything fell apart soon after Van Neste sent an email to all members (around 3,200) telling them that the Prosperity Automated System was failing on a grand scale - that 80% of the members hadn't made a single sale and needed to make 3 sales to get into profit.

The SEC stepped in during September 2006 and shut the whole pyramid scheme down.

Simon Johansson quickly moved onto other ventures - as did Orlando Batista. (Orlando had manned the phones when PAS was still running - working as a type of "closer", persuading people that it was in their interest to join PAS).

However, both have now joined forces calling themselves "dude and dude" to push this "cash gifting" scheme.

The SEC called PAS "an ongoing pyramid-scheme fraud".

Unfortunately, this new scheme the "Overnight Cash System" (or TOCS) looks to be the same type of thing as PAS.

Despite the huge amount of sales hype on the website, none of it is particularly descriptive and there is a lot of talk about tiers and cash payments etc.

Taking "Tier 1" as an example, the basic idea seems to be that you join, pay your sponsor $500, pay TOCS $200 and then go out and advertise the scheme yourself.

If you ever manage to get a sale, you pay your sponsor the money ($500) and then you are "qualified" to take the money from any further sales you refer.

Yes, it's that "1-Up" system again.

So you need to make at least three sales to get into any profit.

The first sale you must pass to your sponsor (you are $700 down), the second you can keep (you are $200 down) and so the third brings you into profit (you are $300 up).

It's pretty much exactly the same as PAS except here there are 5 tiers whereas in PAS there were only 3.

Only if you are daft enough to send off between $500 and $10,000 in cash in the post to some stranger will you become "qualified" to receive, and keep, payments from other members.

However, you will always be in competition with people like Simon Johansson and Orlando Batista who have deep pockets and lots of proof that they can make these types of schemes work.

Basically to make money in the Overnight Cash System you must attract other people in to the scheme so they can pass their money up to you.

To get into profit you must attract at least 3 people and then they must attract 3 people each to earn any money and those they attract must attract 3 people and so on.

Everybody at the top (Johansson, Batista and other cheerleaders) will make money - those entering at the bottom are there only to inject money into the scheme to extend its life a little.

I'd expect that the SEC or some other government agency will intervene at some point and close this down, if it doesn't collapse by itself.

Johansson and Batista will no doubt then dream up another "make money doing nothing" scheme to replace it.

Final Word:

I'll be frank: If you are naive enough to believe that everybody can make money by joining a ludicrous pyramid scheme like this then it's your own fault if you lose a load of money.

If you join the Overnight Cash System the only thing guaranteed is that you will lose money.

Depending on where you live you may even lose your liberty (yes, this type of thing is illegal in many countries).

Don't be gullible, avoid this doomed-to-collapse scheme.