From a few fraudulent individuals who tried to sell the Hollywood sign or Bosphorus Bridge, which is renamed as July 15 Martyrs Bridge following the coup attempt, the methods of swindling people to part with their savings has changed and come a long way. Regardless of the added nuances and deceptions necessary to keep up with the times, the core principle has remained the same in most cases. And that is offering something that is too good to be true.

There are numerous famous large-scale frauds with new methods both in Turkey and around the world throughout recent history. The infamous scheme of Charles Ponzi back in 1920s was one of those. So much so that, the method he used became the backbone of many fraudulent schemes that came after regardless of the new fluff added on top to confuse and mislead the victims. Named after Charles Ponzi, the Ponzi scheme is defined by U.S Securities and Exchange Commission with these words:

"A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors to create the false appearance that investors are profiting from a legitimate business."

In short, the scheme relies on money from new victims to pay of earlier investors to attract even more victims. The moment those new gains dry up, the system collapses but by then the money and perpetrators are long gone, unless apprehended by authorities.

If you look at the recent history of Turkey, you can see that there were numerous Ponzi schemes that came right after another despite the cautionary tales afterwards that showed each fraudulent company for what it was. All of them also added their own flair to the scheme with popular buzzwords and trends of their times, such as "investment opportunities by bankers" or "website providers of the new age." And these were just some of the Ponzi schemes that became so big that they occupied a large section in the media both prior and after their collapse. Who knows how many of them are still active under the radar?

Recently a new name was added to the Ponzi schemes that finally collapsed after swindling a sizeable group of people. This was Çiftlik Bank.

Throughout the previous year, Çiftlik Bank had a major presence in Turkish media, both in news articles and in advertisements. It was talked about on TV shows, had advertisements running in prime time slots of several channels and launched a major campaign in social media. Not to mention the word of mouth effects in the daily lives of the people involved in the scheme either as an unknowing victim or willing perpetrator.

During that time, any who dared to point out the nature of the business run by Çiftlik Bank had indicators of being very likely a Ponzi scheme were threatened or ridiculed by the frauds or even the victims, in an ironic twist of fate.

Yet since January 2018, the cracks in the system became visible with the "investors" getting nervous. By March, it collapsed entirely with the company declaring bankruptcy with the founder missing and CEO claiming ignorance of the fraud.

As the dust settled, one of the main focuses of the blame following the scheme was the media itself. Many claimed media failed to its primary duty, which is to inform them. Victims said that the positive media presence of the company in the form of advertisements and paid content gave the company an air of legitimacy which led them to trust Çiftlik Bank with their savings. Let us see if there is any truth to those claims.

Metin Can, from the economy desk of our sister newspaper, Sabah daily, wrote an article with the title of "Here is the truth of Çiftlik Bank" back in November 24, 2017. It was an important example of investigative journalism. In this article, there were numerous significant points such as the Ponzi scheme nature of the organization. It also said that the promised gains were not feasible in the current finance world. The article also stated that the members of the organization were being deceived as Çiftlik Bank was not actually implementing any investments or production, contrary to what its management claimed. All these claims were backed by solid evidence in the article.

I would like to point out that the article in question was published nearly four months ago.

Until this comprehensive reporting by Metin Can, Çiftlik Bank already reached a massive user base numbering tens of thousands. Unfortunately, until then, the Turkish media was asleep on the wheel or dealing with much more "important" issues and missed the danger of major fraud in the country. Most of the news articles about Çiftlik Bank had a positive nature and at most had some half-hearted attempts urging caution tacked on at the end. Instead of upcoming danger, the articles were detailing the massive farms being built, increases in the number of retailers and so forth. As I said, our media was asleep.

The cautionary news articles by Sabah daily continued in the following days and weeks after Metin Can's initial article. In those articles, the issue was examined from different angles to provide a complete picture to the readers. Sadly, the number of media organizations joining Sabah daily in this effort for responsible journalism were quite few.

This was despite the fact that Turkish media's news websites usually copy each other's articles heavily, which can cause unfortunate chain mistakes. However, many news websites decided to ignore it. Perhaps the reason for that makes itself apparent in the following paragraphs.

On the other hand, the management of Çiftlik Bank was definitely not asleep at the wheel contrary to the large part of the Turkish media. They used their social media platforms to target the reporters of the article and their newspaper. They started a smear campaign claiming, "The newspaper asked money from us and when we did not acquiesce to their demands, they came after us with these hatchet jobs." They also galvanized their members to attack the newspaper. These were the very same members that experienced great regret and disappointment these days following the realization of being cheated.

As you might know, I am the ombudsman of Sabah daily as well. Therefore, I had the chance to follow the aftermath quite closely. The newspaper received dozens of calls and hundreds of emails. I speculate that a part of those who contacted me for this matter were true believers of the system.

I spoke with our reporters and said that the information in the articles was correct to those who called me with a complaint. I also stated that if they find a factual mistake or offer a specific criticism, we could review the issue again.

On the other hand, we received numerous insults and threats from those who did not give their name or used fake addresses and accounts. Çiftlik Bank tried every method to silence us including placing an advertisement, which unfortunately becomes effective in Turkish media from time to time. But Sabah daily continued to investigate and report on the scheme, undeterred by the pressure, defamation and threats.

Following this effort, both the public and officials took a closer look at the situation which led to the collapse of this latest Ponzi scheme. According to the official reports, this virtual fraudulent web managed to gather TL 511 million ($128.3 million). A large part that amount was not paid back to the members as promised.

This damage is quite sizable. But at least we can console ourselves a bit by saying Sabah daily's relentless reporting prevented that number from getting even higher. I sincerely congratulate the economy desk of Sabah daily and the journalists who wrote these articles. Hopefully it can provide an example to others in the future.