Accused of defrauding 2.4m Nigerians, MMM founder dies; 6 other things you didn’t know about him

Once accused of defrauding 2.4m Nigerians, the death of founder of popular Ponzi scheme MMM, Sergey Mavrodi, has been announced to the dismay of many who still have their cash stuck in the controversial money scheme.

According to reports, Mavrodi aged 62, died after he had felt weakness and pain in the chest area and was taken to a city hospital from a bus stop overnight Monday, March 26.

Sources say the cause of Mavrodi’s death who had created the company “MMM” in 1992 which quickly gained popularity and became the largest financial pyramid in the history of Russia was due to a heart attack.

MMM started in Nigeria in November 2015, when it launched a new website for Nigerian audience with the company lowering its standards and promised profit was 30% per month since its primary target was unemployed people.

The number of Nigerians that signed up by late 2016 was shocking – 2.4 million with many of them hoping that MMM would give them easy money after investment but they were shocked when after a year of its existence in Nigeria, MMM announced the freezing of all members’ accounts.

Read also: Saraki clarifies canceled trip to Switzerland

Listed below are six things you may not know about the late Mavrodi who himself wrote an open letter to Nigerian journalists whom he claimed were causing unnecessary tension in the country at the time MMM announced the freezing of all its members accounts based in Nigeria.

1. Sergey Panteleevich Mavrodi is a Russian criminal and a former deputy of the State Duma. He is the founder of the МММ series of pyramid schemes.

2. His MMM series of pyramid schemes are said to be one of the world’s largest Ponzi schemes of all time, in the 1990s. By different estimates from 5 to 40 million people lost up to $10 billion.

3. Mavrodi declared MMM bankrupt on December 22, 1997, then disappeared, and was on the run until his arrest in 2003

4. In 2007 Sergei Mavrodi was found guilty in a Russian court of defrauding 10,000 investors out of 110 million rubles ($4.3 million)

5. On April 28, 2007, a Moscow court sentenced him to four and a half years in a penal colony. The court also fined him 10,000 rubles ($390)

6. In January 2011, Mavrodi launched another pyramid scheme called MMM-2011, asking investors to buy so-called Mavro currency units.

7. In May 2012 he froze MMM operations and announced that there would be no more pay-outs

 

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