MACHIAS – A Machias-area moneymaking opportunity that promises women a $40,000 return on a $5,000 investment is illegal and will result in most people losing their money, according to the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

Special Assistant Bob Way said Monday that the office had received inquiries about the pyramid scheme from women in Machias, Holden, Bangor, Hallowell, Camden, Waldo County and Falmouth.

“We’ve gotten two to three calls a week for the last six months,” Way said.

The scheme operates under several different names, including “A Women’s Project,” “Women Helping Women” and “Wild Women,” according to a warning posted on the attorney general’s Web site.

Women are invited to mock “dinner meetings” in which participants are asked to bring new recruits. They are urged not to tell their husbands about the program, according to the attorney general’s warning.

Women who enter the scheme at the lowest level are referred to as “appetizers.” They are asked to donate $5,000 to the woman at the top of the pyramid and to recruit six other women who are also willing to make a $5,000 donation.

Women move up the food chain on the dinner table until they are “dessert,” at which time they are supposed to receive a total of $40,000 from other participants, according to the attorney general.

The scheme will result in almost all participants losing their money, according to Attorney General Andrew Ketterer.

“If one person recruits six people and those people have to recruit six new people, and so on, after only 13 levels, the number of new recruits exceeds the total population of the United States,” Ketterer said. “Except forthe people at the very top of the pyramid, the great majority of participants will lose all their money.”

That is why pyramid schemes are illegal, Ketterer said. Under state law, organizers and participants in pyramid schemes can be found guilty of a misdemeanor, resulting in a fine of up to $5,000 and 11 months in jail. “It is not too harsh a condemnation of such pyramid schemes to say that any money a participant receives is stolen from someone else,” Ketterer said.

Some callers to the Maine Attorney General’s Office have reported that organizers told them a lawyer had assured that the investment plan was legal.

“Such claims are part of the scam,” Ketterer said.

Women who are involved in the moneymaking opportunity should ask for their money back, he said.

Way said anyone who cannot get their money back should call the Attorney General’s Office at 626-8800. The address for the attorney general’s Web site is www.state.me.us/ag.