Warnings over finance course spreading in Māori, Pasifika community

A Hamilton woman living in the US admits she targets single mothers, Māori and Pasifika to join a finance course that international regulators have likened to a pyramid scam.

IM Academy encourages people to sign up to expensive foreign exchange (Forex) trading courses where they can offset their fees, and even make money, by recruiting others to join.

It has been fined by US regulators for illegally offering financial products and had received warnings from different European authorities, with one saying it had the characteristics of a pyramid scheme.

Many people who have joined and left the scheme have also spoken out, saying they felt scammed and manipulated into recruiting other people to join.

A British 19-year-old told RNZ she lost $2000 after joining IM at the beginning of the year.

Hamilton-born, now US-based, Rhaiah Spooner-Knight became involved with Forex about a year ago after a friend introduced her to the online platform IM Academy.

Through social media, Spooner-Knight said she had helped recruit more than 1200 people into the Academy, about 500 of whom were from New Zealand.

“I’ve got people [who] are single-mothers, we have the [Pacific Island] community, the Māori Community, that’s probably our biggest assortment of the groups, purely because a lot of them are trying hard to find another way, a lot of them have financial hardships, getting jobs.

“When they see people like me, who look like them, it’s trusted and they feel like if she can do it, I can do it also.”

Spooner-Knight said IM Academy cost $US199 to join, and people pay a monthly fee of $US174.

For that, people receive access to the video training courses and IM Academy’s educators, who analyse the market and give people trade ideas.

But the fees can be waived, and members could even generate an income, by signing up others, she said.

At the time of speaking, Spooner-Knight said she made $US5000 per month from IM Academy – but most of that now was generated from recruiting.

Financial disclosures the company provides in the US state 85 percent of its members made less than $US1500 per year from recruitment. At the very top, it says, 0.05 percent of members made more than $500,000 a year.

‘Manipulation tactics’

Aisha Sow from the United Kingdom told RNZ she lost $2000 after being recruited into an IM social media trading club at the beginning of the year.

The 19-year-old said one of the features of the team was that they would host hour-long Zoom calls five to six times a day.

“They’d say things like ‘you have this life-changing opportunity, go and share it with as many people as you can’.”

She said more senior members would prey on people’s financial insecurities.

“They know obviously people who are with IM, they join because they’re in desperate situations, they desperately want money, especially because…