For residents of Papua New Guinea facing unemployment and financial hardship, Golden Sun sounded like a golden opportunity. Image source: Übersee-Museum Bremen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
For residents of Papua New Guinea facing unemployment and financial hardship, Golden Sun sounded like a golden opportunity.
The concept was simple: participants were tasked to watch 15-second clips of popular movies and write short, positive reviews about them.
It seemed like an opportunity worth pursuing – especially for those who saw family, friends, and social media personalities claiming to have made huge profits in just a short period of time.
For those without a reliable source of income, it was worth a try.
Joining Golden Sun at “level D” would cost an initial investment of 700 kina (approximately $350), but participants were confident they would earn the money back.
Liaising with members via the Telegram messaging app, Golden Sun purported to be a business registered in the United Kingdom with ties to Universal Studios and other big-name movie studios.
In associated Facebook groups, claims were made that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was among the business’s investors.
For a while, the service appeared to function as intended.
Golden Sun members could exchange the points they accumulated from writing reviews for money, which would be deposited into their bank account.
However, last week, members who tried to withdraw their earnings found that the website was offline, and the chat and social media accounts supposedly run by the operation’s managers had vanished.
The total disappearance and absence of communication left most members with only one conclusion: they had been scammed.
It’s unclear exactly how many people were affected by the scam, but locals say that the total number of participants could be in the tens of thousands.
Dr John Cox, an anthropologist from Melbourne University was presenting a guest lecture at the University of Papua New Guinea when students asked him about Golden Sun.
“And I said, ‘Where’s the money coming from? Are people being promised unrealistic returns, with no real explanation of how that money has been generated?'” Dr Cox said.
“It looks like a pyramid scheme to me.”
Major banks in PNG issued statements denying any association with Golden Sun following claims that they were affiliated with the scheme.
Abraham Tamsen, one of many people affected by the scam, spoke about his experience.
“I’m angry,” said Tamsen.
“But at the same time, I thought to myself ‘that was my mistake’. I made the choice to go for that. But anyway, I learned from that.”
