Deceit

26/01/2024 Nilson Lattari

If someone deceives us once this situation is due to our lack of life inexperience. If we are deceived twice, this situation is due to our ignorance. If we are deceived three times, this situation arises from our behaviour and our belief that everything will gonna be alright in the end.
In the mid-70s to early 80s, especially in Brasil, there were groups of men who sold products and objects while gathering people to buy them, and in exchange, these neophytes would become members of the group. After becoming members of the group, their mission was to engage new members and, of course, the older members would sell these products to them.
This method gave people the opportunity to earn money if they sold more products connected to the admission of new members. They were regarded with better positions in the group because if their neophytes sold products they earned commissions over their eternal neophytes.
Of course, the profit of these groups came from the admissions of new members because to access the group it was necessary to buy their products. Then, people needed to recruit new members to recover their initial investment. Merely, it was a Pyramid Scheme.
These frauds exist until today, and there are no surprises in these actions. All the time there are new people in the market ready to be exploited and other people ready to deceive them. And there is no possibility to warn them about frauds in progress. There is a proverb that when the alms are great, be careful, but this proverb doesn’t have any effect on new, inexperienced, and ambitious people who imagine that they found easy money.
In fact, frauds can be defined as a combination of two ambitious people: a smart guy selling to people who imagine themselves to be very smart people.
Once I was invited to participate in a similar meeting. A very important hotel in the city was chosen to host the event. On arrival, there was a well-dressed man wearing an elegant blue suit with a gold bracelet on his right wrist, and a Rolex on his left. He also wore a tie with another gold bracelet and elegant shoes. The most prominent feature that stuck out to me was his thick Italian accent. He was trying to convey the idea of a winner within that enterprise that promised people the possibility to be a winner like him. Then, the big surprise was the product that they sold: soap in powder!
In my studies at the university, I read something about signals reading. It wasn’t semiotic yet, but some examples to try to define concepts of interpretation in literature. At that moment, a signal of alert enlightened me because the signals were clear. Then, I decided to observe people in the audience and not that man. One of his advisers decided to ask me if everything was fine, and I answered that it was fine, evidently the people’s look was fixed on him, the man. And the adviser was curious about that guy who was looking at the audience and not at the man. Everybody was wearing suits as my talent scout told me because it was important to create a prominent vibe, I deduced. In the end, suits are suits. There were women who wore elegant clothes too.
Of course, I could see that frauds were facing me. How is it possible to enrich someone selling soap in powder? Obviously the manufacturers or old members.
“I decided to elaborate a strategy” to run away from that place at the end of the audience. When the audience finished I drove to the exit door. But there was a kind of security guard wearing a suit as well who stopped me. And he told me that I would have to talk to Giovanni, the lecturer. Then, at that moment I played a scene like a good actor, something I have never done before. I knew how to transmit signals like them. I argued with the guard about my emotion when I heard Giovanni speaking because I remembered my Italian grandfather. Because of this, I needed to go outdoors to breathe fresh air. When the guy saw the expression of emotion on my face he decided to allow me to go out, and I went back home.
There is no surprise when we deceive someone to avoid being deceived. If someone wants to be deceived, it is their problem and mostly due to their ambition.