The unlicensed Loom investment scheme is receiving high patronage in Ghana

This is ongoing despite the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) caution against the scheme to the public.

Most people patronising the scheme are using social media platforms particularly WhatsApp and Twitter.

Loom is a peer-to-peer scheme which involves people being invited to invest as little as GHC20 with the promise of a return eight times its value within a short period of time.

When one joins a Loom group, the new entrant is encouraged to get as many other new investors as possible in order to ensure that the scheme is sustained.

This is because the scheme is likely to fail if new investors do not contribute to paying old ones.

Usually, the investors convince potential entrants to understand that this is not a scam and people get their monies as fast as new people join.

An ordinary Loom pyramid is grouped into four colour-coded levels - purple, blue, orange and red. Whoever is the first to sign up for the group sits in the red level, which is the central level, and gets the payout when the group fills up.

Loom money Pulse Ghana

Two people sit in the orange level, while four investors fill the blue level. The purple level takes new entrants with eight spots open.

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Once the eight spots in the purple level are filled, the group splits into the top half and the bottom half as the investors in the outer levels move into new levels.

The new groups of seven investors each then have to recruit eight new investors to once again break the circles into another two groups.

But participants are now being arranged in a list according to whoever made payment first.

However, as with any such peer-to-peer investment scheme, new entrants are likely to lose their investments when investors start to dry up and groups take longer to fill up.