"It Was Like Girly Fight Club. The One Rule Of Girly Fight Club: You Don't Talk About Girly Fight Club."

This story was corrected and updated on Saturday, August 18, 2012.

A Guilford woman who attended* a meeting of a "gifting club" that eventually was broken up by federal authorities recounts her role in the venture in her blog "CT Out and About."

Juliana Gribbins, author of the column Shoreline Living in The Sound, said she was asked to pay** the $5,000 entry fee to be part of the all-women club that promised a $40,000 payout, but never felt right about it. In her blog, Gribbins goes into great detail about what happned when she went to her first meeting of the club.

"This is all hush-hush Top Secret with a capital T and a capital S. It’s like Girly Fight Club. The one rule of Girly Fight Club: You don’t talk about Girly Fight Club," Gribbins writes in her blog. "Well, I’m going to talk about Girly Fight Club. I’m going to talk about it if only to never be invited to Girly Fight Club again. These women’s groups are popping up all around me like an infestation of bedbugs. Everyone who tries to rope me into one of these groups is a friend and an all-around good person. I have no doubts about that. However, I can’t help but get a funny feeling when someone says she can turn my 5,000 clams into 40,000 clams without my having to do anything but basically wait around for the big payout. Well, that is until I hear I need to recruit more members to the group. There it is, folks. There’s the catch."

Gribbins left the club before federal agents arrested some of its ring leaders, i on charges of running a pyramid scheme.

"What if the police come in and put a stop to everything," Gribbins says in her blog. "I did some research to back up my suspicions. Yes, gifting tables are illegal. Yes, you could be punished if you participate and are caught," Gribbins recounts in her blog post. "You might not get caught. You might get your money before the whole thing goes kablooey. But there is a reason no one is allowed to park in the driveway of the house where the gifting ceremony (lowercase g, lowercase c) is being held. The police want to find the house. They want to find it because gifting tables are against the law."

Gribbins also discussed her ordeal in a Hartford Courant article that published over the weekend.

*The original post of this article indicated that Gribbins was lured into attending a meeting; that wording was incorrect.

**The original post of this article indicated that Gribbins paid the $5,000 entry fee to join the club; that is incorrect.

Patch apologizes for the errors.