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KUALA LUMPUR: Police rounded up 100 people at a gathering for a get-rich-quick scheme at the Sunway Mentari business centre on Tuesday night and seized 17 luxury cars.

Police are now looking for the mastermind of the pyramid scheme -- a 23-year-old woman.

The raiding party, comprising 100 officers from the Federal police Commercial Crime Investigation Department and the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism, surrounded a restaurant at the business centre about 11pm before moving in.

Of the 100 people screened, 59, including nine women, aged between 20 and 40, were taken into custody and remanded until tomorrow.

The 17 cars, including BMWs, a Nissan Fairlady, a Mitsubishi Lancer and a GTR Skyline, were used to lure people into investing.

Federal police Commercial Crime Investigation Department deputy operations director Assistant Commissioner Rohaimi Md Isa said the scheme mostly targeted civil servants who earned less than RM2,000 a month.

He said members of the scheme were required to recruit new members.

"New members were required to pay an initial sum of RM41,000 up front.

"Getting low earning members to pay up was not a problem as the recruiters would usually take care of the documentation to apply for bank loans," Rohaimi said.

Once the loans were approved, the RM41,000 would go into the personal accounts of the recruiters as the company did not have a bank account.

Some members got back a fraction of what they paid -- about RM2,000 to RM3,500 -- for recruiting new members, while those who failed to bring in new faces got nothing.

Rohaimi said police had received five reports against the scheme, while the ministry received 30.

"We believe the scheme has been active in the last three years and is believed to have amassed tens of millions of ringgit from unsuspecting members.

"We are now looking for the 23-year-old female mastermind," Rohaimi said.

http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/12ich/Article