There are two such crooked schemes.....
Platinum is basically a scam where you hand over money for something that has no or little value. At least one has the choice whether to hand over that money
Plati-nama is also a scam where you hand over money for something that has no or little vale. With this scam one has no choice but to hand over the money.
(Sorry -couldn't resist that. Seriously, you did well to warn people,exchangeboy. Maybe you could forward that message to a couple of newspapers...)