I have some Studiotraffic info, and since I'm at the lazy end of a workday, I'll blab on a bit here....
Out of morbid curiosity, I was popping in and reading the Studiotraffic forums once in a while for about last year of it's existence.
Basically it imploded, just like other ponzis. The influx of new money wasn't enough to maintain the consistantly rising payouts by older members. Starting in about October 2005 you could start to see people becoming concerned over how they were to receive payment (in some cases the check was in the mail, so to speak).
Around the same time, the company started "hiring" staff and volunteers to help run the site, process payments, moderate forums, etc. From what I read on anti-ponzi sites, it's a common practice for accumulation of "staff" so in the end if things go dreadfully sour, anyone affiliated with the company could potentially be held accountable. Something about that just doesn't sound right in my head (I have no clue of the law in this regard), but I'm relaying the info here in case someone else DOES know the thruth behind that statement.
Anyway, As the new year began, the situation became worse, the head guy "John Horan" started becoming reclusive, eventually even the hired staff stopped hearing from him altogether. In February, most of the members clued in to the fact that the party was over, and it crumbled.
I forget the exact order of things, but bear with me... But I believe the Studiotraffic FORUMS website registration (
www.studiotraffic.org/forums) was scheduled to expire in April or close to it, and it was never renewed. The staff pulled out the pitchforks, the forums became one big victim-fest in the weeks before the registration expired. Everyone cried about the money they lost (newer members obviously). Many started discussing their legal options, and some members started up new forums for the victims to help each other in this time of need etc etc... Just for the record, I never bothered checking out these new forums. That's too morbid even for me.
What I found the most interesting, though, was this: For the longest time, the forums were very highly censored. If you had any reservations about the studiotraffic program, your post was either deleted by moderators, or the thread was locked. You weren't allowed to post any external links on the forums at all, etc... That kind of moderation is typical of ponzis. Once everything started crumbling, the moderators created a sticky annoucing that since they didn't have faith in the integrity of the program anymore, they wouldn't moderate any of the messages. THAT is when things got interesting and all hell broke loose.
Ok well, long post, sorry about that. As I said though, it was a morbid fascination to watch something like that fall.
- FA
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