Are you the success story, or the "Judas Goat"?

A judas goat leading lambs to the slaughter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People in suspect schemes often defend their pet scheme with the "it paid me" defense. It is a fallacy. Sometimes, they don't even get paid. It's "my friend / my upline / my relative / someone I know got paid".

Apparently they never heard of the "Judas Goat".

Judas Goat is a trained goat that goes out, and leads other goats or lamb to a specific destination, often, a slaughter house.

In general, the judas goat's life is spared while the rest of the flock are slaughtered.

That is exactly how a Ponzi or a pyramid scheme works; some people will get paid, the rest gets fleeced, but they don't know it yet. And they may be taught to bring in even *more* people, "share the wealth / opportunity", so to speak.

In other words, in a pyramid scheme, everybody is a judas goat.



And in a Ponzi scheme, the few people who got paid early, are judas goat, used to entice other people to join in.

But the majority of people is going to get fleeced.

Then there's the lamb trying to be the goat (i.e. I know it's a scam, I hope to make money from it before it goes under)

Then there's the blind lamb (i.e. what do you mean that's a goat? That's a lamb like us!)

Then there's the optimist lamb (i.e. what do you mean that's a slaughterhouse? That's a great place to live and play!)

And so on and so forth.

Related articles

• Myths about Pyramid Schemes Busted!
• BAD EXAMPLE: Yes, Ponzi pays, so what?
• The "It could hurt a lot of good people" argument
• What exactly is "due diligence"?