Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do?
I will disagree with some of the other answers here.  In my view, the most important dimension of the situation is not your friend's potential loss but the potential losses of the people he may convince by using his position as youth group leader, etc., to draw more them into the scam. Exactly how to handle this depends on many factors that aren't mentioned in your question (and probably rightly so, as this aspect of the situation moves beyond personal finance).  For instance, if your friend is a "pillar of the community" who is widely trusted, and you are not, there may be little you can do, since people will believe him and not you.  If you have some influence over the groups he is trying to recruit, you can attempt to provide a counterweight to his recruitment activities. Again, how to do this depends on other factors, such as how he is recruiting them.  If he is just privately contacting individuals and inviting them to these meetings, you may have to just keep your eyes peeled for anyone who seems tempted and try to dissuade them before they suffer the "brainwashing".  If he actually tries to do some sort of public recruitment (e.g., holding a meeting himself), you could try to inject doubt by, e.g., attending and asking probing questions to expose the dangers.  If you think the danger is widespread, you could consider taking some more public action, like writing a column in a local paper about this organization. Of course, another major factor is how much you think people stand to lose by this.  However, in your question you indicated that your friend has invested "multiple month or years of income".  If he intends to pressure others to invest similar amounts, this sounds to me like enough danger to warrant some preventive action.  Few people can afford to lose months or years of income, and sadly those most vulnerable to a scammer's siren song are often those who can least afford it.  It doesn't sound like a situation where you'd have to devote your life to the cause of stopping it, but if I knew that dozens of people in my community stood to lose years of income, I'd want to make at least a small effort to stop them, rather than just keep my mouth shut. In doing this, you may lose your friendship.  However, you stated that your goal is to resolve the situation in a way that is "best with lowest loss of money for everybody".  If you really take this utilitarian view, it is likely that you may have to give up on the friendship to prevent other people from losing more money.