Food seller Kefir goes bust after attracting thousands of investors

This was a scam from the beginning. The money is in a bank account in the Canary Islands. “A fool and his money are easily parted!”

Pyramid scheme.  Who buys food from a website by "becoming a member" and "owner" of the site??

Japan Inc fraud yet again. Let's hope the suit is successful but it may end up that they were bleeding money for a while and there's nothing left

as a yogurt seller, had expanded its business areas over the years to other food products such as maple syrup and dried persimmons. It had been involved in solar and biomass power generation and the development of ultra-lightweight vehicles in recent years

What a weird business model. They would have followed the areas that had the best return on their scam. These areas thus I would be worried for similar fraud problems.

Ponzi scheme!

Do the hustleToday  04:24 pm JST

This was a scam from the beginning. The money is in a bank account in the Canary Islands. “A fool and his money are easily parted!”

Maybe you are confusing Canary Island with a tax haven like Caiman island? Because Canary island is a part of Spain who is part of the EU who can, by law, close or freeze any account suspected of criminal involvement. If Japan find that account from Kefir, they can file a freeze account to Spain and at some point get the money back.

They already done it with some money from the Yakuza in other countries in the EU.

I remember my first Tokyo neighborhood. There was a "Co-Op" grocery store. When we went inside we were told it was for members only and to fill out a form demanding personal info to get the right to shop there. We walked out. I always noticed it had hardly any customers compared to the regular supermarket nearby. It shut down not long after.

I mean, what a dumb, pointless business model -- forcing people to become members to buy your products.

The four companies together have liabilities of 105.3 billion yen ($949 million), with 33,000 creditors.

$949,000,000. err that is a lot of money.

One could say almost a billion dollars.

I remember my first Tokyo neighborhood. There was a "Co-Op" grocery store. When we went inside we were told it was for members only and to fill out a form demanding personal info to get the right to shop there. We walked out. I always noticed it had hardly any customers compared to the regular supermarket nearby. It shut down not long after.

I mean, what a dumb, pointless business model -- forcing people to become members to buy your products.

I think Co-Op has connections to the communist party which might explain the weird policies and general atmosphere there. In my area we have a regular Co-Op that doesn't require membership but I'm pretty sure they used to, or at least they used to ask me for my membership card every time at the register.

Then there is a tiny "Green Co-Op" that kind of takes it to another level, requiring a $10 down payment and you have to order things in advance and pick them up on a specific day of the week.. They have some quality stuff and you are guaranteed to get the same price for a year, but there is a "normal" high-end supermarket close enough so we have no use for it.

In a "true" co-op, employees are members, not the consumers. This ensures all worker-owners an equitable portion of profits. No minimum wage is needed as they would get a percentage of the co-op's profits. Sad that co-ops are getting a bad rap from this. Consumer co-ops do nothing for the workers.

In a "true" co-op, employees are members, not the consumers.

I don't think there is such a clear definition. Workers cooperatives and retail cooperatives were established over much the same period in the 19th century.

However, the principle of requiring shoppers to be members surely applies to stores such as Costco and other similar organizations. I don't think their shareholders would describe it as pointless.

Kefir, which started in 1992 as a yogurt seller, had expanded its business areas over the years

A 26 year Ponzi scheme? I guess they lost their way more recently.