Too true it's rife. In our company nearly all the cabin crew have bought into it. You are quite right, if you point out the mathematics involved and the fact that for one person to make money, eight must lose it, you are accused of 'putting women down' and being a 'jealous male'. I had a hard time convincing my other half to avoid a similar scam at the hospital where she works. Of interest to everyone my next door neighbours daughter has made over £102,000 out of this deal..her path is simple, she starts the pyramids. So she gets all the money from the first level to the last level. To cover her tracks she then 'buys a heart' off the girls in the first level to demonstrate 'sisterhood' and 'helping them out'. So when the pyramid collapses they don't blame her cos 'she bought a heart off them'. She then starts another pyramid. I chatted to her about it and she said that 'you would have to be mad to buy into one unless you were in the receiver position or the first row'.
Anyway there are some girls out there pushing this scam and it has nothing to do with empowering women and everything to do with lining their pockets. Her sister started two pyramids and took £36k in the first four days.
If you think about it if she starts a pyramid and it actually matures she gets 14 girls to give her £3k. If it goes one more level then the girls below her get their money. She deliberately only sells it to friends at the first level then to strangers below that, cos the girls at the first level are 'likely to get some money back but the ones above that will probably lose'. For information she runs a model agency and has hundreds of impressionable young girls on her books she can tap into or bully into buying in. Its as easy as that in an airline. Get some of the senior crew involved and the rest follow like sheep.
My girlie wanted to buy into one and I said not to bother, but to start her own pyramid...for some reason she thought starting one was immoral as it seemed like theft to take all the money from the entire pyramid, but it was okay to buy into an existing one and just try and get her friends involved. Fortunately she has seen sense and not bothered.