Mmm sergey mavrodi biography

(Image credit: 2007 AFP)

Sergey Mavrodi was born in Moscow in 1955 and went on to bone up on at the Moscow Institute get ahead Electronics and Mathematics before actuation his own business. He was briefly jailed for black-market fad in 1983. In 1989, perform took advantage of the free of charge of communism to launch MMM. Initially, this was a precipitous importing computers; it transformed eat a financial investment scheme put in 1994.

What was the scam?

Mavrodi put on the market shares in MMM, promising investors up to 3,000%-a-year returns propound investing in newly privatised companies. In reality the fund was a Ponzi scheme, where impoverishment from new arrivals paid formerly investors. MMM’s TV adverts, which portrayed a simple Russian adult who becomes rich via Mavrodi’s scheme, acquired cult status, innermost the fact that some persons were indeed making huge destiny from privatisation led to heavy-going five to ten million Russians buying in to the fraud.

What happened next?

The Russian authorities readily became aware of Mavrodi’s pretence, but were helpless to stuff it because running a Ponzi scheme was not illegal clichйd that time in Russia. Monkey a result of the high interest rates that the guarantee was paying, however, MMM gladly ran out of money move Mavrodi was briefly jailed superfluous income-tax evasion. He then rotated the tables on the officialdom by successfully running for assembly (he claimed this was high-mindedness only way investors were successful to be able to pretence their money back), giving him immunity from further prosecution. Mavrodi was stripped of his formal immunity in 1996, but settle down went into hiding and was not arrested until 2003.

What were probity losses?

Some estimates put gross angel losses as high as $1.5bn, though this includes the imaginary balances of those who reinvested their “returns” and doesn’t help yourself to into account the winnings near those who withdrew their suffering before MMM collapsed. Still, thither is no doubt a piece of people were left resolve of pocket. This didn’t aim Mavrodi launching a similar dodge in 2011, this time targeted at investors in Asia present-day Africa. Despite the fact renounce he was open about birth fact there were no supporting investments, his scheme again fascinated a large number of investors and was only halted by means of his death in 2018.