Zion Oil is an affinity scam! Per the SEC1:
“Affinity fraud refers to investment scams that prey upon members of identifiable
groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, the elderly, or professional groups.
The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are - or pretend to be - members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster's ruse.
These scams exploit the trust and friendship that exist in groups of people who have something in common. Because of the tight knit structure of many groups, it can be
difficult for regulators or law enforcement officials to detect an affinity scam.
Victims often fail to notify authorities or pursue their legal remedies and instead try
to work things out within the group. This is particularly true where the fraudsters have used respected community or religious leaders to convince others to join the
investment.
Many affinity scams involve "Ponzi" or pyramid schemes, where new investor money is used to make payments to earlier investors to give the false illusion that the investment is successful. This ploy is used to trick new investors to invest in the
scheme and to lull existing investors into believing their investments are safe and
secure. In reality, the fraudster almost always steals investor money for personal
use. Both types of schemes depend on an unending supply of new investors - when
the inevitable occurs, and the supply of investors dries up, the whole scheme
collapses and investors discover that most or all of their money is gone.”
