BETL: Bulgaria’s newest financial pyramid

But that hardly matters, because BETL's business looks more so like a pro forma face of a company that otherwise shows all signs of a classic pyramid scheme.

The people inside it, new investors who have ploughed in a certain amount of money and expect a passive income every day, are looking for other people to invest as well. For a while, they will all receive regular small amounts of money by redirecting part of the new capital to those who joined earlier. Those who joined earlier and brought more people after them will receive larger amounts, which will motivate them to bring in more and more partners. Very quickly, however, the structure becomes unstable and the logical conclusion is for the people at the top to collect the investors' money.

In the case of BETL, this will probably happen rather quickly, because the pyramid is growing at breakneck speed. In the company's Balkan-wide Telegram group, in which only people who have already invested money participate, as of November 20, there are nearly 20 thousand people. They grow by thousands weekly. Ivaylo Todorov, one of the administrators of BETL groups and among the earliest partners of the company in Bulgaria, explains that the Bulgarian investors in the company number 12 thousand people.

Some people sincerely believe it is a legitimate business, and Todorov apparently falls into this group. Others openly comment that they are participating in a pyramid scheme and discuss it publicly on social networks and forums. Their idea is simple - to enter early enough and exit before it collapses.

A pyramid or not

In addition to rapid growth for people who have invested money, BETL also has a particularly steep financial architecture. The company, in short, sells packages for an amount that should be paid off in less than a month. In theory, users buy a charging station that physically exists somewhere in the world and the income from it goes to the investor. This doesn't make much sense unless magical charging stations appear somewhere, and are just as magically used by millions of people all of a sudden.

The company convinces its investors that such demand exists, including in Bulgaria, by posting photos and videos of restaurants, chalets and other places.

Loaded with crypto

Entering the BETL system is relatively easy - you need a phone number and an invitation code that comes from someone who is already inside. Each person who brings in a member receives a percentage bonus in the money paid out to him.

Investments can be made via the website bluelele.com. The design of the site is simple - users can choose a "package" (or the size of the battery station). In the first months of BETL, there is an option for a free package with a minimum return, followed by ten packages with an increasing price. By mid-November, the two cheapest packages were removed and the first level is actually the third, at a price of 540 dollars.

Upon purchasing it, the user is promised 20 dollars in daily income, i.e. the money should be knocked out in 27 days, and everything after that is pure profit. The most expensive package costs 27,000 dollars and promises over 22,000 in monthly income.

On November 21, access to the bluelele.com domain was suspended. According to Todorov, the site will be modernized and launched again soon. People who have already invested in BETL have the opportunity to access the system via a personal link for each.

The money is sent via the largest stablecoin Tether (USDT), whose value is equal to the US dollar. Tracking two of BETL's wallets on the TRON blockchain, preferred for its low transaction fees, one can see that as of November 20, one of them had 1.5 million dollars, and the other had 900,000. In the larger of the two, the amount constantly fluctuates between 0 and 1.5 million, and in the last three months the wallet has been drained 12 times. After the funds accumulate, they are transferred to wallets on Binance.

BETL also has wallets in other blockchain networks, such as ERC20 (Ethereum), Polygon. It also uses the similar stable cryptocurrency USDC.

The use of cryptocurrencies bypasses one of the most problematic links for such schemes - passing through the banking system. Opening an account is accompanied by checks under the Anti-Money Laundering Measures Act, and subsequently, in the event of suspicious transactions, financial institutions are obliged to report to the authorities (in this case, the National Agency for the Protection of the National Security of the Republic of Bulgaria), and they can also temporarily block transfers or freeze accounts.

It's everywhere

BETL's advertising activity is also visible in the physical world - the town of Novi Iskar, for example, is plastered from top to bottom with advertisements for the company. There is also a boom in interest in Southern Bulgaria in the Petrich and Sandanski regions. Conferences are being organized, and a Christmas party is being prepared, where, in addition to Carlos Nassar, other celebrities are expected to attend. Charging stations are being filmed in various locations in Sofia, Sandanski, etc., and agents are touring the entire country, including mountain huts.

Source: скрийншот от Facebook

But its main campaign is on the Internet. TikTok is flooded with videos in which people from BETL are trying to attract more enthusiasts. The place where almost everything related to BETL is in is the Telegram chat application.

People who are inside the Telegram channels must participate in weekly group meetings, where the set goals are discussed, as well as the extent to which they have been achieved. These meetings seem to have two goals. The first is to attract more people and distinguish the serious from the frivolous - or the tricksters from the swindlers. Regular participants in meetings receive points and rise in the hierarchy, while those who do not enter have their points taken away. The second goal is to simulate the activity inherent in real companies.

The traceable Bulgarian names in the scheme seem to be at a lower level. Two of the BETL domains were registered by Bulgarians - betl.bg by Stefan Stoyanov and betlbg.bg by Filip Belichenov, who according to his social media profiles is or was a manager at Winners' Group, an insurance broker that also relies on multi-level marketing and a network of agents.

In short: it seems that BETL is not exactly the fruit of someone's brilliant idea, but rather the product of a kind of Ponzi scheme farm. The big problem with organizing such a network is that its creation is associated with costs, and not all of them work out.

It is very difficult to assess which idea could attract interest and which will sink - at some point and in a specific country, phone batteries may be a hit, elsewhere and at another time people may go crazy for a miraculous food supplement, cosmetics, home appliances or crypto.