A few months ago, I decided to check out what the whole deal was about SpeakAsia. I had heard rumours about it being a scam but they were quite visible. They had advertisements on all mainstream television channels, which probably gave them a sense of genuineness.
I found many discrepancies on how a person could register, how they were paid for surveys and that it had no physical office in India despite a multi-million dollar company. Another reason suspicious on SpeakAsia were raised because they did not reveal their clients who would pay such high amounts for a simple survey.
Real Clients Were Non-Existent
The truth it out now, the clients never existed and information for surveys were lifted from Wikipedia. According to a news report Mumbai Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) have made arrests. They have recently detained the owner of a web design company.
The police has seized material which had survey materials for household appliances along with payment receipts. The person arrested revealed that he was lifting information from Wikipedia for creating these surveys.
Apparently SpeakAsia through another subsidiary would pay this person money to create material for these surveys.
It is good to see in comments on our previous post on SpeakAsia Scam, that many people were made aware of it and were dissuaded from investing in such a scheme. But it is also sad to know, that several thousand people did end up investing money and getting duped.
Next time it would be good to avoid any online schemes for surveys which requires a investment.
Do drop in your comments.
Related: Why SpeakAsia Looks Like a Scam!