Have you ever heard… of MMM Global. The answer for most is… certainly not. My audience is majority international… but primarily based in the United States… and Europe… so the likelihood that they have heard of a decade old Ponzi network that plagues Africa, as well as Asia… is rather low. Still… when considering the scope and history of this network… and the fact that a source contacted me with information from INSIDE a recent offshoot of the scam… it seemed like a proper time to cover what is (quite literally) a ponzi scheme with lethal outcomes.
Lets begin with context. MMM (founded by Sergei Mavrodi, Vyacheslav Mavrodi, and Olga Melnikova…) is a notorious ponzi scheme… initially launched in 1994. Likely exacerbated by extreme poverty and lack of financial regulation… the scheme exploited common Television advertising… with a 330 MILLION ruble push… in March of its founding year. Putting this in perspective… (and calculating for Inflation)... that would be 38 BILLION rubles today… or roughly 650 thousand dollars.
MMM became one of the most explosive scams in all of human history. At its peak (and during its mere 5 month lifespan) The initial scheme was processing millions of dollars (not rubles… dollars)... per day… with exponential adoption, promising customer returns (in some cases) of up to 30,000 percent annually.
Just 5 months after launch, however… MMM imploded. In July of 1994… the ministry of finance in Russia issued a statement that the company had sold unregistered securities. Mass protests outside the company headquarters led to a disastrous riot… and contrary to how it may seem… the public was actually SUPPORTING this ponzi scheme. In just FIVE MONTHS… somewhere between 5, and 10 million people had poured their life’s savings into the company… with what SEEMED to be life changing returns. However… as governmental intervention began to close in… the reality of what this company had actually done became far more obvious.
In the mid 1990s… Russian financial regulation was in a strange place. The country didn’t actually HAVE any laws regarding ponzi schemes… so in an effort to take down this obvious fraud… they resorted to charges of “tax evasion” Estimates for how much unpaid taxes were due… range from 50 million dollars (at the time) to 1.5 BILLION… and when accounting for an army of subsidiaries… that value becomes incalculable. As an example… one individual sub company of the scheme was reported to have owed 50 billion rubles (26 million dollars at the time) of unpaid taxes by itself.
Manipulated by Sergei Mavrodi… rage and confusion became a weapon against the government. The company might have issued unregistered securities… operated a ponzi scheme and destroyed the savings of nearly 10 million people… but the REAL enemy… was the system. In august of 1994… Sergei Mavrodi was arrested on unrelated tax evasion charges… that is… unrelated to his most RECENT fraud scheme of MMM… (in fact, the ultimate charge that resulted in his imprisonment… was an unpaid fine, of just 1000 rubles… or 33 dollars US) but upon his release… (just two months later)... he entered, and WON… (fueled by the support of millions who believed that he was their financial savior) an election for the Russian state Duma. (a chamber of russian parliament)
This political position… brought him “immunity from prosecution”... but once elected… he appeared only once in his entire political career for an actual vote. What was that vote? A proposition to strip him of said immunity… on which he voted “no”.
The following year… Mavrodi attempted to start his own political party… but after violating election laws… he was barred from official registration. In anger, he staged a protest… but his inexplicable popularity had (by this time) almost completely waned. Only about 200 people attended marking the end of his populist support.
Later that year, his immunity from prosecution was suspended… and within the next two years, he had both run for the position of Russian president… AND… been placed on an international wanted list. His former company (MMM) declared bankruptcy… and upon his ultimate arrest and prosecution in 2003… he was given a final task. Over the next 3 years… as dictated by the court… he would be required to read all the documentation of his own fraud case… which contained 650 volumes… amounting to roughly 162 THOUSAND pages.
The rise (and fall) of Sergei Mavrodi had been faster and more intense than almost any other businessman in human history…. However… all we have discussed so far… is the original company “MMM”... we haven’t even GOTTEN… to MMM Global.
For the next four years… Sergei Mavrodi went dark… until 2011… when he returned in style. Vowing to “destroy the existing financial system” and “bring about the financial apocalypse”... Sergei founded a new ponzi scheme… called MMM Global. This new company… was unapologetically evil. Designed to target developing nations… Sergei was quoted as saying “It is a naked scheme, nothing more ... People interact with each other and give each other money. For no reason!”
His newest scheme also had roots in the now infantile “crypto currency” movement… utilizing a pseudo token called “Mavro” (pseudo in the sense that this token could be manipulated extensively, thus having very little to do with actual blockchain technology)... and despite his open acknowledgement of what this was, and why he had done it… while targeting impoverished countries in Africa, and Asia… the company began to rapidly grow. Infecting nearly 110 developing nations… an atmosphere began to take hold that this was a community of “mutual aid”. Victims were led to believe that selflessly helping one another would lift them out of poverty… and over the next 11 years… this attempt at destabilizing the worlds financial infrastructure… would evolve, and persist.
Working with a source… I was granted access to what appear to be translated organizational documents… as well as internal recruitment videos. (as unsophisticated as they seem… these plans are part of a scheme that has victimized MILLIONS on a global scale) Splinters of this pyramid scheme exist even now… One of the larger fragments was finally shut down as I worked on this very video, (a fragment that managed to steal over 7 million dollars by itself) possibly necessitating some sort of followup… but the format of these mirrored networks is almost always the same.
Treating Sergei Mavrodi as a sort of… financial deity… they prey on the worlds most vulnerable… pulling tens of thousands of people into the abyss… with very severe… sometimes LETHAL consequences. Suicide fears dramatically rose… for example… in Nigeria… after a single branch of the scheme stole savings from up to three million people. One man drank insecticide… after his savings were stolen just two weeks before his wedding… and the damage that this new network of schemes has now caused… is on a scale we cannot possibly imagine.
The closest that this network ever got to its actual public mission… (that is… destabilizing the world of finance and bringing about some sort of “monetary apocalypse”)... was in Zimbabwe, during 2015. 66,000 victims were denied access to their investment… (forced to take an 80% loss just to try and withdraw when the scheme finally collapsed)… which may have caused an actual modicum of economic instability. Estimates on this are hard to find… but yet again, the prevalence and widespread impact of this network is visible in countries all around the globe.
Sergei Mavrodi would later die of a heart attack in 2018… but to this very day, despite the “official” shutdown of MMM Global as a “centralized company”… splinters and copies appear in developing nations all around the world… designed purely, and with malice… to damage the financial future of anyone, and everyone they can.
At its peak (before the official… yet temporary collapse of the MMM Global network) the company was circulating over 150 million dollars… PER DAY… and a tool we can use to examine just how corrupt this network really was… is the “Gini coefficient”. Designed as a mechanism to evaluate income disparity… the Gini coefficient displays (between a value of 0 and 1… but often highlighted as a percentage) just how extreme the income or wealth gap is between members of a population.
A value of 0… means that all members have the same income, or the same wealth. A value of 1… means that a single person has the entirety of that groups income or wealth secluded to them alone… while everyone else has nothing… and as an example… we can see that a country like the united states… has a gini coefficient of 41%... indicating that there is certainly income (or wealth) disparity… and a tangible degree of concentration… (a fact known by anyone familiar with United States economics)... but if we now compare that to 90% for MMM Global… it becomes clear that this scheme is not a mutual aid premise… it is NOT financial freedom or valuable opportunity… it is a zero sum game… where all of the money goes to a very small number of people.
On one of the still functioning versions of the webpage… we can read the following. QUOTE “This is a community of ordinary people, selflessly helping each other, a kind of the Global Fund of mutual aid. This is the first sprout of something new in the modern soulless and ruthless world of greed and hard cash. The goal here is not the money. The goal is to destroy the world's unjust financial system. Financial Apocalypse! Before you join, be sure to be acquainted with our IDEOLOGY"
This would seem to indicate that a community of “ordinary people” are all reaping the benefit… but witnessing that the scheme holds a Gini coefficient of over 90%... and understanding the reality of what a Zero sum Game actually is… the picture changes. Think of chess… to win a game of chess… you must beat your opponent. For one person to win, the other MUST lose progressively more and more pieces until defeat.
There is no mutually beneficial outcome of chess. The game is to beat your opponent… and the outcome is binary. So too is MMM Global. The money you put in is dispersed to prior participants as “interest” or “yield”... and in this horribly predatory “zero sum game”... all gains, are equal to the collective total losses… and all losses… are inflicted upon joining members. Remember… a gini coefficient of 91% indicates that there is unbelievable wealth and income concentration… a zero sum infrastructure indicates that all gains are balanced against very real losses for its members… meaning (in totality) that by every conceivable sense of these words… MMM Global is NOT a community of mutual aid… it is a predatory and destructive scheme that steals from nearly every single person who falls for it.
Speaking to the efficacy of this ponzi network… MMM Global is so prolific… and so widespread… it could very well have been one of the primary driving factors behind bitcoin adoption in third world countries ALONE… as it deliberately leveraged an emerging crypto asset during the mid 20teens. This would be a severe blow to the narrative that Bitcoin was a rising tide to lift all boats… and a vehicle of financial independence… because if true… it would mean that tens of millions of people (or more) were ONLY adopting bitcoin (as a mechanism)… to participate in what is arguably the worlds largest and most damaging ponzi scheme.
Bitcoin adoption in developing nations purely as a mechanism to engage with a self professed financial apocalypse ponzi network is… not something I had ever considered before… but thinking about it now, it makes a lot of sense.
The benefits of this for MMM Global are obvious. Payments were harder to trace, or reverse. Protection for the scammer was nearly absolute… while accountability and recourse were non-existent. The schemes were harder to shut down, harder to fight against, and easier to execute… culminating in a realization that one of … (if not THE) most prolific ponzi schemes in all of human history… might well have been a central pillar behind Bitcoins popularity, and dramatic value.
Predicated on “exclusivity”... the revolving door of ponzi schemes would require that users have an “invite code” in order to bolster the idea that this opportunity was a “privilege.” Translated testimonials (this time from a chinese version of the scheme) show that users were pulled in with lofty promises of unrealistic returns… and knowing that this entire network was built by a man dead set on bringing about the “financial apocalypse”... I leave you with this.
Identified by my source… One of the wallets associated with a series of MMM offshoots as far back as almost 3 years ago… which has transacted over 2.3 million times… just now, less than 2 weeks ago… woke up, and began showing signs of life. Small “pending” transactions that seem destined to fail purely based on gaas fees alone… were sent out… but after a lengthy period of silence… this would once again show that the influence and seemingly impossible immortality of this ponzi scheme… is alive and well.
Efforts to eradicate this persistent network have thus far failed. It is clear that despite knowing what this really is (an effort to destroy the current world of finance… however unsuccessful)... people are still supporting it, and falling into the trap. Sergei Mavrodis funeral… was legitimately paid for… by investors in his 2011 global rebirth of the scheme… and while I may sit here… baffled at the reality we live in where a ponzi scheme architect can be elected to the Russian Duma… its clear that in some parts of the world… Sergei Mavrodi is revered… even damn near worshiped.
MMM Global was (and is) one of the worlds most widespread ponzi schemes. Designed to attack vulnerable people, in developing nations… it continues on despite over a decade of increasing regulatory scrutiny. How long can it last? I have no idea… but understanding what it is… having worked with a source who contacted me through email… and seeing the bizarre story behind its creation… I thought it would be an interesting video.
