MMM Scam: How Sergey Mavrodi Outshined Charles Ponzi, the Grandfather of Ponzi Scheme

Sergey Mavrodi

Almost one hundred years after the phrase “Ponzi scheme crept into the American lexicon, many Ponzi schemes have come and gone including the much publicised criminal scheme of Bernie Madoff in 2008. None has coasted from country to country and even continent to continent such as Sergey Panteleevich Mavrodi’s Mavrodi Mondial Movement, MMM.

In order words, Mavrodi has shattered the criminal records of Charles Ponzi, the grandfather of the stratagem and Madoff among many others.

Ponzi and Madoff were national rogues who made international news because of American global positioning. But Mavrodi has acquired an international criminal status and still matching gallantly forward to conquer more economic territories around the world. Perhaps the internet, with the aid of faceless accomplices, fuelled by “easy money” mindset and rising hopelessness across countries has made it so.

Mavrodi is alleged to have scavenged through countries like Russia, China, South Africa, Zimbabwe and now, Nigeria preying on greedy, ambitious and economically damaged citizens.

The phrase “Ponzi Scheme” was derived from a notorious con artist of all time, Charles Ponzi. He was a bubbly Italian immigrant, who was hailed by hoodwinked, aspirational and weather-beaten joyful American investors as living proof of the American dream come true, until his dazzling financial kingdom collapsed just as it rose.

Like all things dramatic, Ponzi’s money magic was a flash in the pan and finally cast him as a tragic Italian-American villain. He was deported to Italy in 1934, tried to defraud Benito Mussolini and wound up dying penniless in a charity ward in Brazil, in 1949.

In many ways, MMM, the meteoric and monstrous pyramid scheme operates like its original ancestor, Ponzi scheme. For example, history recorded that few months after the scheme started, Charles Ponzi arrived at his investment headquarters in a blue stretch limo, puffed his cigars from a diamond-flecked holder, and delivered on his promise to return a 50 percent profit on investments in forty five days. But that was only to the early investors. Within a short time, Ponzi became a working class hero, an entrepreneur who shared the J.P. Morgan secrets of high finance with the common man.

One day in July 1920, as Ponzi approached the State House in Boston, an admirer screamed, “You’re the greatest Italian of them all.” The overnight and miniature millionaire objected, “Oh, no Columbus and Marconi. Columbus discovered America; Marconi discovered the wireless.” “Sure,” shouted someone else in the crowd, “but you discovered money!”

The above quoted euphoric and naive statements depict how credulous and vulnerable people could be to promises of mouthwatering return on investment, especially in hopeless and catastrophic economic conditions.

Historically, virtually all types of Ponzi schemes quickly rose and fell during economic uncertainty.

Sergey Mavrodi is a bantamweight Russian millionaire whose infamous financial fraud and wizardry has cast into the international spotlight. Every attempt to criticise and expose MMM, one of his many disastrous investment schemes  as a fraud fell on deaf ears among many happy Nigerian investors who were neck, hand and foot deep into the system. Barely 24 hours that Mavrodi or his partners in crime shot back in an open letter to Nigeria’s federal government, asking silly questions that explained nothing about what exactly his investment ruse sells, the Nigerian arm of MMM crashed.

Reading between the lines in the purported letter, the author was skillfully pushing blame to Nigerian authorities the same way Mavrodi did in Russia. Reports had it that when the plot hit the rock in Russia, the Ponzi scheme kingpin manipulated the anger of Russian investors and directed it at the government.

In the letter to Nigeria government, he asked, among many other questions “Do you want the MMM System to collapse and millions of people to suffer?” And this happened few hours before MMM cartel drew the curtain on its Nigerian investors the same way it did in South Africa around April this year.

Like Charles Ponzi who served various prison sentences in Canada and the United States for his numerous rackets, Mavrodi has a litany of horrendous financial crime records in Russia, and had also done time in prison for them. But that has not deterred investors to trust MMM or whatever name he called previous schemes from trusting Mavrodi with their money.

Having broken the records of his predecessors by marching in to foreign lands, capturing and successfully taking his loots back home, Nigeria may not be Mavrodi’s last conquest.

2 thoughts on “MMM Scam: How Sergey Mavrodi Outshined Charles Ponzi, the Grandfather of Ponzi Scheme

  1. As far as i am concerned, MMM Nigeria has tried! Do you know how much Nigerians invested from onset Many are smiling. only those who came into the system later made “full” losses

  2. It baffles me when people just have a passion to damage someone’s good work, because someone is single handedly doing better than a government should, @ngozi correction, no one has any losses ok, it’s just a precautionary measure to protect the system ok? mmm is coming back better and stronger come 14th January…

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