Muslim Facebook was an absolute poopshow recently because a Muslim entrepreneur was exposed for scamming dozens, perhaps hundreds of Muslims. People are saying he owes his investors over £10 million. I’ll call him Junayd Belfort.
Junayd Belfort’s hustle was running an investment fund for an online education business. He comes to you and says, assalamu alaikum akhi please invest in my business and I will send you monthly returns.
- If you invest A your monthly distribution will be X
- If you invest B your monthly distribution will be Y
- If you invest C your monthly distribution will be Z
There were three tiers and more you put in the bigger your returns.
How were they going to use your dough? They were going to spend it on Facebook ads to sell a course. It kinda makes sense on the face of it. Advertising is expensive and there are sales cycles and cash conversion cycles in any business. By getting investors to fund your advertising on a proven product, you can scale a business much faster than bootstrapping (using your own profits to fund growth.)
But this is a batil transaction.
There’s no such thing as offering guaranteed returns on an investment of this nature. Both the seller and the buyers don’t know the basics of trade law.
لا يبع في سوقنا إلا من قد تفقه في الدين
None may trade in our market except one who understands the religion – Umar ibn Al Khattab (May Allah be pleased with him)
[Jami’ Al-Tirmidhi, hadith 487, hasan]
That’s not all. It gets worse.
Junayd Belfort spent the ad money but couldn’t generate any sales for his digital products. But now he’s got all these guaranteed distributions he needs to pay out every month.
So then, apparently, to keep the scam going, he used the money to recruit other investors… And used their investments to fulfill his payout obligations… Turning the entire thing into a Ponzi scheme. But he couldn’t keep that up for long because eventually, the money dried up and he had to freeze payouts. And that’s when it all started to unravel.
And now, he’s Turkish & Tommy in the hare coursing scene in Snatch.
Me, personally, I’ve been acquainted with Junayd Belfort online for years. I stayed far, far away from him because his marketing and the way he presented himself online set off my BS detector big-time. He used all manner of deceptive advertising and falsely claimed he had a professional working relationship with many popular Muslim organizations and influencers. But I couldn’t say anything because I had no real proof and a Muslim’s honour is sacred.
That’s all over now. Through his greed he ruined himself. But that is not the point of this discussion.
A lot of people online are subhanallah-ing and astagfirullah-ing and pontificating… But the conversation no one is having is this.
The only way Junayd Belfort could have gotten £10m+ in funding is if the Muslims who invested with him wanted to gamble. Everyone who invested with Junayd wanted to play a halal lottery ticket. They’re all going to say, we were deceived, we were duped, we had no idea. But fundamentally, they all desired to get rich quick and make money from nothing.
And along comes this Paki in a thobe and a beard saying mashallah and alhamdulillah and talking about how he cries so much during tahajjud and how he saw Rasulullah ﷺ in a dream (I seek refuge with Allah)… And the Muslims could not throw their money at him fast enough.
Many of them put in every penny they had. Now, they’ve lost it all and will likely never be paid back.
And I have zero sympathy for any of them.
Because when a legitimate Muslim business owner tries to make an honest living selling real products, these same Muslims say, you’re a grifter, or, if you’re sincere why don’t you work for free? And these same Muslims show contempt for entrepreneurs and people with ambition who want to be wealthy.
The truth is, they love the idea of being rich. They just don’t want to the work necessary to become rich.