Mandala da Prosperidade is a financial scam disguised as a feminist group

A women-only support group, designed to let off steam, feel supported and exercise sisterhood, shattering the stereotype that women are rivals. In addition to all the sentimental support, this union would help one woman at a time achieve her dreams through donations to others. Since 2016, thousands of women in Brazil join the Mandala of Prosperity – or similar groups, such as the Loom of Dreams it’s the Flower of Abundance – in search of it all. In the pandemic, a period of even greater vulnerability, the popularity of this type of group grew a lot and, at the same time, several former participants began to denounce those responsible for embezzlement and claiming that this is all just a coup🇧🇷

It is not known for sure where these organizations emerged. According to the promotional material for one of them made available to CLAUDIA, a Canadian anthropologist who lived in several African countries in the 1980s created the first group of its kind based on the teachings passed on by women from those rural communities, who supported each other and lived in harmony. “It is a unique and organic experience that must be worked on with prosperity and abundance. The project was taken to Canada especially to help women victims of domestic violence and, through a circular system, with economic donations, women unite for the prosperity of others and their families”, says the presentation.

Fact is, the promise is good. Each woman who enters (invited by another who is already a member) has to give a “muff” (as the donations are called) to one of the old participants as support and help to pursue her dreams. The donor would receive, in less than a month, 8 times the amount invested to then pursue her own dreams. Meanwhile, exchanges and conversations between women would help in spiritual elevation. But all this is nothing but utopia. The Mandala and the like are the same schemes of financial pyramid already known in Brazil and in the world, but with a revamped look and disguised as feminist🇧🇷 The first person to expose herself and say that it was all a scam was the artistic director and teacher Sheylli Caleffi, who in 2016 made a video describing his experience in the group and explaining why it was all a fraud. Today, the video on YouTube has more than 56,000 views and she has become the main source of complaints and information about the “new lineages” of the coup.

Sheylli was invited to participate in Mandala by a work colleague. As she knew she had a job with women, she thought the group would be perfect for the teacher. “I agreed to participate right away, so I was invited to a meeting to introduce myself. From then on, everything got really weird. It was already strange that all the meetings were online and everything was very exaggerated, all the participants said that life had changed after joining Mandala, that everything had worked out and they had achieved their dreams. It took a while for them to tell me about the gift and, when that happened, I immediately realized that it was a pyramid. If it’s so miraculous, why don’t people participate multiple times to multiply the money? When the meeting was over, I pretended to be very interested, asked for bank details and more information and then went to record the video to denounce it”, says Sheylli, who today runs a support group for former members of the communities and claims to receive recurrent threats because of of his work against the coup.

How it works

In a report to CLAUDIA, Elis*, from São Paulo, who spent approximately a year participating in the Mandala da Prosperidade, told exactly how the scheme works. “I was invited by a college friend after a trip we took together. She was in a bad moment, living in a place she didn’t like, with problems in her relationship. I had other friends participating so I felt safe. It took a long time for me to really understand what was going on there,” she says.

Elis’s case is very similar to most women who are recruited into the scheme. Those chosen, in general, are more vulnerable because they are experiencing emotional or even financial difficulties and, therefore, are more likely to accept. In the first meeting, the “weavers” or “guardians”, the oldest participants, talk about spirituality, healing and how participating in all of that and helping each other will only bring good things to your life. Other women also give moving testimonials. “I had difficulty being heard in other situations and I felt part of that group instantly. It’s very difficult to feel understood like that, so I dove in,” says the woman from São Paulo, who, after three meetings, gave her gift to one of the women, worth approximately R$5,000.

The value is not chosen randomly – the sum of the numbers results in 9, a mystical number, which means the end of a cycle and the beginning of another. This all contributes to the spiritual atmosphere that these women are also looking for. According to Sheylli, in her case, the money was not mentioned right away. The strategy used was to make her very curious to the point of asking what the value would be. After the donation, which can often leave women in debt, because the promises are so many that some even ask for loans from the bank, they must invite two other women they know to join the group.

The new Mandala participants are called “fire women”, so that they burn their limiting beliefs. After the treat, they consolidate within the group and become “air women”, who must “blow through” the lessons of the mandala and bring at least two other women into the scheme – a classic feature of a financial pyramid. When they manage to convince other people to join the scheme, they become “land women”, who basically charge the other people for treats and pass on the teachings. At the top of the pyramid is the “water woman” (or in the center of the Mandala, as the participants usually say), who receives R$ 40,000. These terms are appropriated by the group of philosophies linked to the Sacred Feminine.

When the Mandala “closes” (the moment when 8 new people effectively entered the scheme and contributed the money), it spins and, then, a new woman would benefit from the gifts. However, this rarely happens, because the financial pyramid is a non-sustainable business model: in general terms, it works through rampant statement of new members, until the number becomes so absurd that the scheme breaks down. That is, only the first to actually participate would receive the money. Sheylli says that she even asked one of the “water women” if it wasn’t a pyramid and the answer was no, because pyramids are “triangular, masculine and finite” and mandalas are “feminine, circular and infinite”.

Fault

Elis’s problem started when she became an “air woman” and had to call two other people into the scheme. The idea of ​​having to convince someone to participate in something and still invest money bothered her too much. From then on, the experience of the “support group” was no longer so pleasant. “For me it is very difficult to induce someone, so I was very embarrassed to invite other friends to participate and the girls above me demanded a lot from me. They weren’t even the worst, I’ve heard reports of others who pressed too much, but, indirectly, they made me feel as if I wasn’t capable, as if my communication skills weren’t good, because I couldn’t call anyone. This even made me study more things related to communication to try to improve this “defect”, she says.

His desire to leave the Mandala came about because of this and not because it was a pyramid. What motivated her to leave the group for good was the mental exhaustion that all that search for people caused, in addition to the pressure that being inside caused, added to the lack of self-esteem that all that had caused. According to Elis, Mandala no longer seemed like a refuge and the meetings were no longer a happy moment, but almost a second job. So, even with the insistence of some of the other women, she decided to leave the group and, soon after, she decided to forget that it all existed.

Growth in the pandemic

Sheylli noted that the number of victim support group participants has grown a lot in recent months amid the pandemic. And, in fact, on the internet, especially in Facebook groups, the number of former members who decided to expose their stories and their difficulties in recovering lost money seems much greater. In addition to the fact that people are more fragile and, consequently, more susceptible to falling for the scam, the increase in cases is also due to the fact that several other “strands” of this type of pyramid have emerged in recent months. Now, in addition to the exclusive groups for women, which appropriate feminism to convince the participants, there are also similar groups that accept men, such as Munay🇧🇷

“I notice that men understand faster what is happening. And it has nothing to do with intelligence, but we women often doubt our own abilities, especially when it comes to money. There is this sexist stigma that women don’t understand money, so the tendency is that even if they are suspicious, they take longer to come to their senses. In addition, men are much more open to talking about the subject and even denouncing it, while women go into denial”, says the teacher.

Another important aspect that helped in the visibility of pyramid schemes is the fact that familiar faces and names became part of some of them. Famous people on social media and even social movement activists end up falling for the scheme, often without even realizing what it is about. With their powerful reach and a speech based on important articulations, they manage to convince more and more people. Thus, what was previously restricted to elite white women has now reached peripheral black women, who end up suffering much more from the impacts of the coup. The conversation usually starts with a “crowdfunding to help a sister realize her dreams” and ends with the Prosperity Mandala.

There are also reports of a huge increase in the number of indigenous women involved in Mandala, influenced by great leaders. These well-known names, however, never show up in videos and advertisements for the pyramids, but use the most vulnerable people in these communities. Videos of black and indigenous women in difficult situations talking about how Mandala changed their lives circulating in WhatsApp groups are not uncommon. Moved, the women who receive the content end up giving in and becoming victims of fraud, especially since the videos mostly come from trusted people, such as friends, family, therapists and co-workers.

The new “crops”

Another important point is that, in addition to changing names and creating new “crops” within Mandala or Telar itself, the movements decided to “popularize”….