Four residents in Canadian province of British Columbia (B.C.) were found to have conducted a "deliberate and well-organized " fraud that resulted in more than 800 investors losing 10 million U.S. dollars, Canadian Press reported Friday.

The B.C. Securities Commission said the three men and one woman began the fraud in 2005 with an investment club. They lied to investors about how their money would be invested, the returns investors could expect and the risk associated with the investments.

What the four people have done are described as a Ponzi scheme, which means to pay returns to separate investors from their own money, or money paid by other investors, rather than from profits from the investments themselves.

Investors in B.C. and elsewhere had deposited about 16 million U.S. dollars before the scheme collapsed in June 2007, the securities commission said. Investors tricked by the Ponzi scheme had received back as little as 3 million U.S. dollars and no more than 5.6 million U.S. dollars.

(Xinhua News Agency August 8, 2009)