Torres Scam.
Are you kidding me.
A new scam in town and we are not talking about a tier 3 city where the normal dwellers wouldn’t be savvy enough to know that ‘there are NO free lunches’ in this world. This has happened in the Financial capital of the country.
If history has taught us one thing, it’s this: Easy money isn’t easy. And yet, every now and then, someone comes along promising to turn your hard-earned cash into a financial miracle. Enter the Torres Scam — a cautionary tale of glittering jewels, Moissanite stones, and a Mumbai dream that turned into a collective nightmare.
Torres Jewellers came into the limelight in early 2024. They weren’t just selling jewelry — they were selling hope. “Invest in Moissanite stones, gold, and silver,” they said, “and earn up to 11% weekly returns!”
As soon as you hear 11% returns, what do you do!!!, you take out the calculator or the excel sheet ofcourse. ₹1 lakh would turn into ₹14 lakh in just a year. What can go wrong!!!
18,000 investors fell for it. The first rule of scams is simple: Make it believable enough to hook people, but dazzling enough to override skepticism. Apparently 1 becoming 14 in a year was believable to 18k people.
The Honeymoon Phase:
For months, the scheme worked like a charm. Torres delivered the promised returns — 6%, 8%, even 11% weekly. Early investors cashed in, told their friends, and Torres sweetened the deal with referral bonuses and discounts on pendants.
It was the ultimate trust-building exercise. You invest, you get paid, you trust more, and you invest more. It’s like being in a toxic relationship where the first few dates are perfect — until they’re not.
By December 2024, the music stopped. The returns vanished. Stores shuttered overnight. And the same investors who were singing Torres’ praises were now singing the blues. The Economic Offences Wing swooped in, froze ₹7.4 crore from Torres’ accounts, and arrested key players.
Turns out, Torres wasn’t an investment opportunity; it was a Ponzi scheme. The funds from new investors were used to pay returns to earlier ones — a glorified game of musical chairs, but with people’s life savings at stake.
We might think that this is a scam only the gullible and outright idiots would fall for, and we would probably be right but the underline sentiment that results in these mistakes is GREED and if we do a thorough investigation of the self, we would get a rude shock that this ingredient is in ample quantities in ALL of us.
Suckers Everywhere
This twitter handle https://x.com/sumitkbehal has proved it time and again, he comes up with outrageous offers and strategies and schemes in ‘get rich quickly’ theme and receives thousands of interested parties. Even after accounting for people who like his tweets just for the sarcasm, I am willing to bet there is a vast majority of suckers just waiting to be milked.
Infact, we can do a live experiment to prove this point. Let us decide a charity in advance where we would distribute all the proceeds we gain from a well orchestrated Ponzi scheme.
Don’t think that you are immune from these biases. I know some rather savvy people who fell for that ‘VAULD’ scam pumped by Akshat something.
here is a Linkedin, “oops, sorry” from him.
This is the reason why the age old adage holds true,
A fool and his money find ways to part ways.
and the only way to make sure we are not the fools is by educating ourselves by reading the right books.
If you’d educated yourself, you would pick the following lessons on scarcity.
If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And 11% weekly returns? That’s not lunch — that’s a Michelin-starred buffet. Scammers know greed overrides skepticism, and they prey on it like a cat stalking a laser pointer.
The power of FOMO.
People invested not just because they wanted returns but because they didn’t want to miss out. “Everyone else is making money — why not me?” That little voice is the cornerstone of every scam, from the dot-com bubble to crypto rug pulls.
Base rate
Our faculties should be developed enough to understand base rates, a business’s growth rates, Even cash burning, growth buying , loss making start-ups do not grow half that speed.
Same Lesson, New Characters
The Torres scam isn’t unique. It’s another chapter in the timeless book of financial fraud. But like every good book, it comes with a moral: Wealth is built slowly, brick by brick — not promised overnight with stones.
So the next time someone offers you returns that sound too good to be true, take a deep breath and walk away. Or better yet, ask yourself this: “If this is such a great deal, why aren’t they keeping it for themselves?”
Like in Thailand, Extremely beautiful girls are usually NOT ;)
If someone promises you wealth beyond your wildest dreams, they might be dreaming on your behalf.
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