Behind the decoy ducks and pigeons lurks the same 'business opportunity' lie

Shyam

Even if they are not corrupt, Police officers in the small Indian town of Gadval, can have no valid excuse for failing to investigate your timely complaints about the unoriginal scam disguised as the 'Duck Development Society'. All they had to do, was take a quick look on the Net. and they would have found extensive reports of virtually the same feathered fraud in N. America. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/12/02/pigeon-fraud-galbraith.html .They would also have discovered that concerned Canadian citizens went to the police, but their urgent concerns were also consistently ignored.

In the final weeks of 2010, a crack-pot economic alchemist from Ontario was finally arrested and charged with defrauding around 1000 victims in the United States and Canada via a ridiculous pigeon-breeding Ponzi scheme. Arlan Galbraith (62), the owner of 'Pigeon King International,' deceived people (mainly struggling farmers) into buying flocks of essentially-valueless pigeons for up to $500 a pair. He did this by steadfastly pretending that his company would keep buying the resulting, endlessly-multiplying birds at a guaranteed, high wholesale price to be retailed to the public as a luxury prepared-meat. Victims were led to believe that they couldn't lose and that they should bring all their friends and relations onboard, but it was these would-be pigeon-breeding millionaires who ended up being plucked. Despite timely-complaints to the Canadian police and regulators that Mr. Galbraith was a charlatan running a Ponzi Scheme disguised as a 'business opportunity,' initially no action was taken to protect the Canadian public. Indeed, this chronic regulatory-failure gave credibility to what the Canadian police and regulators should have immediately recognized as a pernicious lie, long before it spread to the USA. It has been estimated that Mr. Galbraith illegally acquired about $20 millions, beginning in 2004. At one stage, Mr. Galbraith's own employees tried to blow the whistle on him.

In 2008, Canadian regulators were obliged to take action when 4 American States issued warnings to the public that 'Pigeon King International' was a scam, and banned all further advertising and recruitment activities. Only then, were Mr. Galbraith and his fake company bankrupted, but it has taken until now to have him indicted as a thief.

In recent years, Canada has become a haven for 'business opportunity' racketeers, where corrupt police officers and officials are known to have played leading roles in promoting and protecting various closed-market swindles. To the eternal shame of the people of Canada, courageous whistle-blowers have been more likely to be arrested than 'business opportunity' racketeers. Yet, not only does Canada have legislation which clearly outlaws money circulation schemes, it also has powerful anti-racketeering legislation designed to stamp-out corruption which was copied from the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970. However, this apparently-impressive Canadian legislation is worse than useless, because it has never been rigorously enforced against 'business opportunity' racketeers..

The Indian people should take notice, because, if your government passes a law, but then your police and regulators do not enforce it, your government has authorized the very crime which it would seek to prohibit.

David Brear (copyright 2011)