Users may have already seen a post on a "Secret Sister Gift Exchange" on Facebook and wondered what it was. The post promises that the user will receive 36 gifts in exchange for an investment of $10, which is a pretty good deal.
The offer is indeed a pretty good one, too bad that it's nothing more than a scam.
The "Secret Sister Gift Exchange," which is said to function similar to a Secret Santa gift exchange, looks feasible at first glance. Six people participating in the exchange will have to invite six additional people, who will all be sending gifts worth $10 or more to the participant in the first slot, and then that participant's name is crossed out from the list. The same thing is done for the person in the second slot, and so on.
However, in order to participate in the "Secret Sister Gift Exchange," the participants would have to reveal personal details such as their home address to be able to receive the gifts, which opens up the risk of receiving a gift that is not entirely a nice one.
In addition, the gift exchange could be seen as a classic pyramid scam, which is an outlawed business model that sees one person recruit other people to make an investment that is paid to him or her. In this case, the recruiter is the person in the first slot, and the investments are the gifts. If the other recruited persons would like to receive the promised return on their investments, they would have to recruit more participants to join the scheme.
"This is a typical pyramid scheme. We're just seeing this on Facebook this time instead of the old way of using letters, and Facebook allows it to spread a lot faster," said University of South Florida mass communications associate professor Kelli Burns.
According to the United States Postal Inspection Service, these chain letters and pyramid schemes become illegal once they request for money or for any items with value, while promising a certain return to the scheme's participants.
While there's no harm in spreading around the holiday cheer, participating in the "Secret Sister Gift Exchange" is not only illegal, but it is also unsafe. Besides, there's no guarantee that participants will be getting gifts in return in the first place.
