Approximately two weeks after Government said it would investigate the au­thenticity of EbayShop Online Re­cruitment, it has now labelled it “illegitimate”.

That’s the word from Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for External Trade, Cooperative and SMEs, Manoa Kamikamica, on Fri­day.

It comes as stakeholders and learned individuals spoke against the increasingly famous platform which has seen many benefit.

But the platform has been called another pyramid scheme where those at the top will benefit more than those who contributed less.

At the pinnacle of it all, experts who have assessed how the plat­form works have suggested that it can come to a stage of collapse leav­ing the contributors to lose out on their money.

While Government is further, in­vestigating the platform, Mr Kami­kamica, said: “It appears to be an illegitimate operation.

“Be wary of this kind of offerings because some of them are not ethi­cal or doing the right thing,” Mr Kamikamica said.

“Be careful of scrupulous trad­ers.”

Consumer Council of Fiji earlier reported how the platform turned out to be another ploy to exploit us­ers when they were promised a pay­ment of $1 per order, which amount to $5 during the free trial period.

“However, when they attempt to withdraw their earnings, they dis­cover that the minimum withdraw­al amount is set at $6, which cannot be withdrawn,” said the CCoF chief executive officer, Seema Shandil.

Subsequently, participants are coerced into ‘buying-in’ by spend­ing their own money to get more orders.

The buy-in options range from a few hundred dollars, to upwards of a $1000.

Mr Kamikamica said Fijians must be careful with traders who offer some things that were too good to be true.

“We can’t stop people from trad­ing with whomever. All we can do is just warn them,” he said.

“The Reserve Bank of Fiji and the council have cautioned them. That is good enough.”

Vodafone Fiji also spoke against the platform.

How does it work?

There are four levels with four dif­ferent subscription fees that indi­viduals have to pay.

The more subscription fees, the more the subscriber earns.

These subscription fees are recov­ered by users in close than a month. The website offers an enticing free trial, wherein users are presented with five online orders to process by clicking ‘confirm order.’

Orders confirmed are in US dol­lars.

These orders appear to originate from popular shopping sites such as Alibaba, Shoppee, Amazon, eBay, Best Buy or Wish.

However the consumer watch¬dog said, these orders are entirely fake and are generated by the scammers’ websites.

Users earn daily and are able to withdraw their earnings from M-PAiSA.

Feedback: josefa.babitu@fijisun.com.fj