Play · fraud defense

Return Reality Check

Updated 2026-07-31 · Sources: 2 · Concept: extend the promise and see where it lands

"Two percent a month, guaranteed" sounds modest. Compounded, it is a claim to beat every fund manager alive, forever, with no bad years. This tool takes the number you were promised and extends it, so the absurdity becomes arithmetic rather than opinion, which is the only argument that reaches someone who has already decided to trust the person asking. It cannot tell you something is a fraud. It can tell you whether the promise is possible.

Predict first

Someone offers 2% a week, guaranteed. You put in $5,000 and leave it five years. What does the promise imply you would have?

Pick an estimate, or skip to your own numbers.

Six questions, in order

The arithmetic above only settles whether the promise is possible. These settle the rest, and they work with the power off: read them before you hand anyone money.

Is the return described as guaranteed, fixed, or "no risk"?
Real returns vary. A guarantee on an investment return is either insured, government-backed, or untrue, and the person offering it can tell you which.
Does it pay earlier investors out of later investors' money?
That is the definition of a Ponzi scheme, and it is always described some other way. Ask what the business actually sells.
Did it reach you through someone you trust at church or in the family?
This is the one that costs believers the most. Affinity fraud works because the referral substitutes for diligence: trust in the messenger is not evidence about the investment. See the SEC's own warning, linked below.
Is there pressure to decide now, or to bring others in?
Urgency and recruitment are structural features of a scheme, not of an opportunity. A real opportunity survives you sleeping on it.
Can you get a plain answer to "where does the return come from?"
If the answer is jargon, secrecy, or "the algorithm", the answer is no.
Is the seller registered, and can you verify it independently?
Check the regulator directly, never through a link the seller gave you.

Question three is the one this site can speak to and most cannot: schemes run through trust networks because trust is the cheapest thing to counterfeit. The SEC's warning on affinity fraud describes cons that spread through churches and communities precisely because trust is high there (investor.gov). 2 Peter 2:3 warns about exactly this: people who exploit you from inside.

The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.

Proverbs 14:15

KJV. 'Simple' here is not stupid. It is untrained, the person who has not yet learned to check. The proverb does not commend suspicion of people; it commends looking where you are about to step. Asking a hard question of someone honest costs you nothing.

Train the same eye on the messages themselves: Scam Spotter → · How scams work

The calculator needs JavaScript. The six questions above do not. They are the more important half.

Worked example (same math): $5,000 at a promised 2% a month for five years. The annual equivalent is 26.8%, and the promise implies $16,405. A good real return of 8% on the same $5,000 gives $7,449. Promised 2% a week instead, the same $5,000 implies $861,023 in five years, which is the arithmetic telling you the money would have to come from somewhere, and the only place left is the next investor.