For the first few weeks of the summer every time I went into the crewroom someone was pushing a bit of paper under my nose asking me to join. Knowing how dodgy it all sounded and knowing people outside work who had fallen for the scam and lost their money I steadfastly refused, and advised anyone else who was interested not to take part. Now a couple of months on the whole thing has dried up in the airline. A lot of crew have lost their money, and people have said they wished they had listened to me in the first place.
Bringing something like this into the workplace is in my opinion about the most stupid thing anyone could do. Regardless of whether anyone has given the hard sell, or whether people have handed money over of their own free will, in the end it will only cause bad feeling amongst the crew (it caused me bad feeling when I began losing it with people who would not take no for an answer!). I know I would not be happy with the person I handed my hard earned cash over to if weeks later I realised that I'd lost it for good. We all have to work together as a team and we should be looking out for our colleagues instead of ripping them off.
I'm very pleased to read this thread and find out that at last someone else sees this for what it really is. It's been lonely out there all this time!