Farming is said to be an honourable and noble vocation.
There is also the added perk of being able to, once in a while, enjoy some of your produce. Whether it’s having fresh fruit and vegetables from your garden to your table, or having hard body chicken or succulent lamb chops.
Any of this would have been tricky for people who were conned into a ponzi scheme of virtual pigs.
The National Prosecuting Authority has obtained a preservation order for R4.3 million to freeze a bank account belonging to Piggy Farm Trading (Pty) Ltd. The Piggy Farm Trading company ran a Ponzi scheme, where individuals could purchase up to 50 virtual pigs at R2750 per pig, in a digital “Metaverse Piggy Farm”.
The Pretoria High Court heard that because these are virtual pigs, the investment is risk-free because the pigs get substituted with other pigs in the event they die. In return for investment, the investor will be paid R550 per month for 12 months, and after 12 months, the pig will be returned to Piggy Farm Trading.
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“After receiving complaints from investors, the National Consumer Commission (NCC) initiated an investigation into Piggy Farm Trading, where they discovered that the Farm Trading operated a multiplication scheme, which offered an effective interest rate of 140%, which exceeds the repo rate by more than 20%.
“This is a contravention of the National Consumer Protection Act. In addition, further investigations by the (Asset Forfeiture Unit ) AFU revealed that the whole scheme appears to be a fraud. The name and /or location of the so-called farm is never revealed on the website of Piggy Farm Trading or any of the social platforms where they advertised the scheme.
“Piggy Farm only refers to an address in the Durban CBD and its different branches. It is therefore doubtful that a farm or even pigs, to the extent of the investments received, exist. The funds received as investments would suggest pig farming on a mega scale. The business account of Piggy Farm Trading held over R16 million as recently as February 2024.”
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The AFU concluded that there is no underlying business model and that incoming investors were paid from previous investments to keep the scheme going.
“This carries the hallmarks of a classic Ponzi scheme. The scheme is unsustainable as it is bound to implode when no new investors are forthcoming with the majority of investors losing their money.”
The Regional Head of Pretoria AFU Martin Mafojane urges any other victims to come forward.
“[We] invite the investors to open criminal cases against the company, as the preservation order was granted pursuant to the implementation of Chapter 6 of POCA, which is a non-conviction-based approach to asset recovery. This means that the AFU will not always wait for a prosecution and conviction to occur before taking away suspected proceeds of crime, as is the case with the traditional approach of Chapter 5 of the Act.”
