Guaranteed Profits in “National-Level LLMs”? Stripping the Mask off the Tech Ponzi Scheme

If you have recently heard someone claim there is a golden opportunity to invest in a national-level AI large language model or a compute center—where a modest investment in a “compute package” yields guaranteed monthly dividends with annual returns of 15% to 20%—do not be tempted. Hold onto your wallet. It sounds like the ultimate windfall of our era. After all, AI is the defining trend; Nvidia’s stock is soaring, and OpenAI is reshaping the world. Investing in compute feels like the only “politically correct” move in today’s market. However, as a veteran who spent thirty years in the trenches of bank risk management, I must tell you: these tech-wrapped financial products are, in all probability, an upgraded version of a “pig-butchering” scam.

At this point, you might ask: AI is indeed making money, and compute is undeniably a scarce resource. Why would dividends from compute be a scam? We must first clarify a fundamental logical fallacy. Many investors fall into a cognitive trap, believing that as long as the general direction is correct, the specific execution is irrelevant. This is like believing that because you are in a gold-mining district, you will inevitably strike it rich, leading you to hand over your money to a stranger who gives you a voided receipt claiming ownership of a mine.

Let me introduce a concept called “Underlying Asset Penetration.” While it sounds like technical jargon, it is simple to understand through a daily analogy. When you buy a mutual fund, you cannot simply rely on the manager’s promised return; you must verify where your capital is actually deployed. If a manager claims your money is invested in rare mahogany furniture, but you discover he is using it to settle a relative’s debts, the underlying asset is hollow. “Penetration” means tearing away the glossy slide decks and buzzwords to identify exactly what is generating the cash flow.

In an AI compute scam, fraudsters show you massive server arrays, lecture you on compute leasing, and tell you that LLM companies are desperate for power. They claim your machines are processing data daily, and the resulting rent is your dividend. The logic seems closed. But you must ask the critical questions: First, are these servers actually running business operations, or are they idling—perhaps just empty shells with blinking lights? Second, who is paying the rent? If the “rent” is funded by new investors buying compute packages, this is not an investment; it is a classic game of musical chairs.

In economics, this is the Ponzi scheme. Many view a Ponzi scheme as simple theft, but it is essentially a mechanism of extreme, unsustainable expansion. Like a balloon, the scammer attracts rapid capital inflows by promising counter-intuitive high yields, using the money from new entrants to pay dividends to early investors to create an illusion of stability. Everyone feels they are sharing in the dividend until the velocity of new capital fails to keep pace with the interest obligations. Then, the balloon bursts.

I once handled a typical corporate non-performing loan. The company claimed to specialize in big data analysis; the office looked like a sci-fi movie, the staff were graduates from elite universities, and the CEO preached “digital transformation” daily on social media. On paper, revenue was skyrocketing. However, during a post-loan inspection, I noticed a red flag: their income source was monolithically narrow. The vast majority of funds came as “prepayments” from strategic partners, which turned out to be subsidiaries of another investment firm. Simply put, they were moving money from the left pocket to the right, using a complex equity structure to mask the vacuum. I advised the head office to recall the loan immediately. Six months later, unable to sustain the high interest payments, the company vanished overnight. This was not a lack of support for innovation; it is that I have seen too many shell companies that are glamorous on the surface but hollowed out within.

Today’s AI compute scams are simply the old real estate and P2P bubbles with a new AI skin. Where scammers once urged you to invest in timber forests or tea plantations, they now push GPUs and compute chips. The underlying logic remains unchanged: exploiting information asymmetry and using tech jargon to manufacture anxiety, making you feel that if you don’t invest, you are missing the greatest opportunity of the century.

We must realize that true evolutionary power—the kind of technological progress that drives long-term growth—never distributes returns uniformly, nor is it “risk-free.” Any investment promising fixed high returns is, in essence, an attempt to defy risk. The first rule of financial risk management is that whenever risk is suppressed or hidden, the payoff will inevitably erupt at a future moment in a catastrophic manner.

Many victims later say, “I believed it because AI is real.” This is a classic cognitive bias. You must distinguish the value of the model from the path of the investment. Large language models are a genuine trend, but buying a compute package from an obscure company to collect dividends is a fake opportunity. It is like agreeing that the internet will change the world, but believing that every small workshop with a “Network Company” sign is a ticket to wealth.

So, how do you determine if a tech investment is a trap? I will give you a simple risk management checklist. First, is the underlying asset transparent? If they cannot provide specific customer orders, authentic lease contracts, or verification of compute utilization via an authoritative third-party platform, treat it as a “black box.” Second, does the yield defy common sense? In a mature compute leasing market, gross margins drop rapidly due to competition. If the promised annual return is significantly higher than the market average and is labeled “guaranteed,” that is a flashing red signal.

A perspective I highlight in my book, “The Compute Curtain,” is that while compute is indeed a future asset, it is a capital-intensive industry with extremely high barriers to entry. Between electricity costs, cooling, and hardware depreciation, every cent of profit requires grueling cost calculations. If a project can effortlessly hand you high dividends, they have either discovered alien technology or they are using your principal to fill a hole.

You may find that these scams are a precision harvest of human nature. They weaponize the anxiety of economic contraction and a blind worship of new technology. If you can establish your own system of value beliefs—what I call “finding your inner sanctuary”—you will not be so easily swayed by external noise. True wealth growth comes either from a deep mastery of professional skills or a profound insight into underlying laws, not from a compute package you do not understand.

This reminds me of the wisdom that greed is the seed of calamity. When people chase high yields, they are often providing the fuel for the scammer’s fire. In the world of finance, the most dangerous scenario is not the absence of opportunity, but the illusion of one—walking straight into a meticulously laid trap.

We must adopt a “God’s eye view” of business games. In the global compute race, the true winners are enterprises that convert compute into actual productivity, not platforms that maintain cash flow by selling “compute memberships.” When you realize the money is coming from investors rather than users, the project has hit a dead end.

Facing these temptations requires restraint. This restraint is not cowardice; it is logic-based rationality. To those pursuing wealth: do not seek certainty within an opaque black box. Certainty comes from absolute control over assets and a clear understanding of the business closed-loop.

If you are currently holding a similar financial agreement or hesitating over an AI compute project, stop. Strip away every promise and ask one core question: If no new investors entered, could this project still sustain its dividends? If the answer is no, walk away immediately.

Life is a marathon. In the expansion phase, it is a contest of courage; in an era of noise and contraction, it is a contest of foundations. Your foundation is your cognitive capacity and your risk awareness. Rather than gambling on luck within a compute bubble, seek opportunity through the deep cultivation of your cognition.

In conclusion, no wealth is acquired without a price. If you do not know what the price is, you are the price. As the old adage goes, “He who is mindful of danger in times of safety will be prepared, and he who is prepared will be without disaster.” On the road to financial freedom, preserving your principal is always more important than chasing high yields.

I am the banking veteran from finsages.org. In an era of information overload and scarce truth, I seek to be the companion who watches the horizon and dismantles the maze for you. If you are interested in this grand game between AI and human nature, and want to decode the underlying business logic to protect your wealth, follow me. Let us be the ones holding the torches, supporting each other across the cold wilderness of data. The world is vast and turbulent; I will see you at the summit.