“People Were Getting Paid… Until They Weren’t”
When a 25-year-old Sir Arthur Lewis Community College student invested EC$400 (about US$130) in Creators Alliance (CA) on March 14, he thought he’d found a smart way to make extra income. The platform promised steady monthly returns just for creating and uploading videos – but by April, his hopes were unravelling.
“You were expected to make your money back by the end of the month, and the task you were supposed to do was create videos and release them on the platform,” he explained to St Lucia Times. “They had different ways to increase your money by buying a video package.”
Now, like probably dozens of others in Saint Lucia, he’s left with nothing. The digital platform – which lured users with returns on video advertising packages priced between US$130 and $1,999 – has abruptly shut down, dissolving WhatsApp groups, stalling payments and leaving investors scrambling.
What started as a simple pitch – earn money by uploading five videos daily – soon grew complicated. During a promotion, he was allowed up to 15 videos weekly, but the real hurdle was cashing out. He was required to set up a chain of financial tools to process earnings.
“You had to set up a brokerage for cryptocurrency and then you would link that with Creators Alliance and you use your red dot (payment) card or your normal bank account card on the Binance (crypto exchange) so you are withdrawing from Creators Alliance to Binance to the brokerage and then from Binance to your bank account,” he said.
His first payout was due in April, but by then, CA had gone silent.
A street vendor, 29, who joined in January, also never received a payout, though he said he saw others profiting. “I guess it shut down because maybe too many people were not cashing out their money in time and waited for their money to build up before drawing it,” he said, criticising chat groups for veering off-topic instead of addressing CA issues.
A 20-year-old call centre worker said she was introduced to the platform by a friend and noticed several coworkers joining. “Several of us saw it as a way of making some extra cash since we don’t get paid much anyway… But I think I joined too late,” she said. “I joined at the end of March and lost the money I invested since everything crashed in April.”
But some also have good tales to tell. They were among early adopters, counting profits while latecomers count losses.
Among the beneficiaries was a 27-year-old self-employed man who joined in December 2024, scaling up from an initial US$799 package within two months: “By about February, I was on the $1 999. I didn’t upgrade anymore, so it was straight profit from there.”
He said he used his earnings to fund his business.
He blames latecomers, saying they had been judgmental and critical at the start and that Saint Lucians “only cooperate when things go good”.
Those who joined just before the shutdown transferred big sums, resulting in major losses, he claimed.
A 52-year-old Anse La Raye businessman had a similar positive experience after joining in December.
“I started at the first tier and after recouping my initial investment, I moved up by investing bigger,” he said. “I was able to recover that money just in time and also made some extra cash before things crashed.”
There was no (investment returns) every one was paying each other. Common sense, if the payouts were never fluid, had stagnation and pauses its because enough monies were not accumulated to put said funds for disbursement. The more recruits…the bigger the pool to dip in…and this includes other caribbean entities…the rug was pulled under their feet as too many investigations were about to commence. Too much attention, IRD, more than likely got involved…they also may have met their wanted threshold in crypt before flags raised.
All these people talking about “you came late”, you are a thief in possession of stolen money from all of those persons who lost. There is no legitimate product here just a scam.
@Oh Really April 12, 2025 At 10:33 am
That’s what really gets me on this. These people are okay knowing this is a ponzi scheme. They are okay knowing they are basically taking someone else’s money. They’re happy they got in early to perpetuate the scam. Wow! All those making money on this should have those amounts confiscated.
All those who profited should be charged with collusion and return those monies to others. They should be ashamed of themselves, blaming others instead of themselves. You did not make money, but took from those who invested after. That’s how a pyramid scheme works.
A sucker is born every day.
Many of the participants were warned that this was all a scam, but I guess as always most people wanted to prove for themselves that it wasn’t.
One of my friends came to my house to hire me on this platform and I boldly said to him ” no way, this is a scam” and I personally warned him to discontinue but I guessed the thought of earning fast money was worth the try.
Well, when something like this sounds too good to be true! Especially where a simple viewing of five or more videos could’ve paid you, didn’t you find that this was too good to be true, come on now! I hope that we all learnt from this scam.
The authorities need to arrest all the so called merchants in St lucia. So that the next time a version of this comes to saint lucia they will run from it.
When folk want quick and easy money that’s what happens….it’s like the dog with a bone in the mouth who looks in the reflection and sees what appears to be a bigger bone and drops the bone in it’s mouth -oops (keep your bone). In this day and age you all LUCIANs always crying things hard yet still you are so easy to give up your funds $$$ for an UNREALISTIC RETURN — folk there is perception, DECEPTION and then there is reality.
This was a pyramid scheme FABRICATING as a form of investment in which each paying participant recruits additional individuals, with returns being given to early participants using money contributed later (from new recruits) until the (recent recruits) at the bottom of the scam/scheme hit rock bottom (broke). Some of you are really that dumb – I am not surprised.
I almost got caught in this. I was at the brink of joining and honestly, would have. My feelings were that it was too good o be true etc. It didn’t make sense how you would get paid just for sharing videos. However, the fact that many persons locally were making money, I got convinced that it was worth taking a chance.
Some people got it good. They left their jobs and were living off that. People bought vehicles, renovated houses etc.
Some won and some lost. Its sad though.
There was this particular lady whom I told “this is a ponzi scheme” but her response to me was “y’all Lucians, everything for y’all is a scam”. Well, I guess, some Lucians are very insightful.
There are some people who were genuinely unaware of what they were getting themselves into, and there are those who went into it head first with blinders and ear plugs on. In early January, the Grenada National Cyber Security Incident Response Team put out a press release advising people not to get involved with CA. This press release was circulated on Facebook (which is how I came across it), and I personally forwarded it to people I know that were involved in CA. Some chose to ignore the information saying they haven’t seen anyone get scammed, and in the same breath, still tried to encourage me to jump in head first. One friend told me, “Do it and trust God, and you’ll see how your life will be transformed”. Another friend forwarded me the link to the CA website and their Whatsapp chat group. Immediately I noticed that the website was poorly constructed, and the information was poorly written; grammatical errors, poor sentence construction etc. I shared my findings with that friend and she took my advice and did not invest more (good thing she said she already made back her initial investment). Fast forward to April when this thing crashed as I expected it would, all i hear is crickets!!! Would I approach those who chose to ignore the warnings and ask them how they’re doing? No, I most certainly won’t. People are people, and they will do what they want to do no matter what you tell them, no matter what evidence you present them with. I smelled a rat from day one, but I cannot help it if someone else does not smell it. I can only hope that people learn from this experience.