I'll speak for myself, but it's not a matter of being triggered or attacking you over semantics. It's about fundamental misunderstandings which lead to the scams.
Ok, fair enough. Definitely some financially unsophisticated, or overly trusting people (or whatever people want to call them because I truly don't want to offend anyone) got scammed or in the least drawn into something they didn't understand and my heart breaks for them and their losses. Everyone is hammering me over my assumptions or word choices (which is fine, I'm a big girl and can take it) but I wouldn't assume these arrangements generally fell into the scam category without more information (maybe after getting more information it does fall into the scam category but right now we don't have that information).
Please anyone feel free to address my actual question regarding whether the average cardholder that you know or yourself (obviously each individual case is different) actually had a net loss, after accounting for both recent unpaid bills and the value of points they received the whole time they were allowing their cards to be swiped.
Just like it's probably a mis-characterization to label these cardholders investors, if a majority (or plurality or whatever standard you set) of these cardholders actually net money out of a multi-year arrangement with these owners, even accounting for recent losses, (and I truly don't know what to call these arrangements but I'm sure plenty of courts will address it) it might be a mis-characterization to call whatever their arrangements were a scam.