Sergie Marvodi, a 62 year sold Russian businessman and founder of popular Ponzi scheme, Mavrodi Mondial Moneybox (MMM), has died of a heart attack.
Businessday gathered that the 62-year old Russian mathematician, was rushed to the hospital on March 25 with pain in his chest, but died several hours later in Moscow as the emergency team failed to save his life.
Mavrodi, whose MMM financial pyramid was a typical Ponzi scheme in which earlier investors receive profits from subsequent investors in the form of mavros, promised a returns of 30 percent a month, as well as and bonuses for investors. As soon as the number of new clients stopped growing, the pyramid collapsed, causing huge financial losses.
Reports say between 10-15 million people in Zimbabwe, China, South Africa and Nigeria lost money invested in the scheme.
Sergey Mavrodi was born in 1955, Moscow with his father an Ukarian and Greek origin. He is a computer programmer and also a mathematician.
In 1989, he founded the corporative society known as MMM in the middle of an economic downturn that hit Russia at that time.
In 1994, the Russian government were threatened about the increased popularity of the scheme, thus they arrested Sergey mavrodi and seized over four Rubies of peoples cash. Report has it that the swav team that arrested him took about 17 trucks of cash.
However, while in prison, he collected signature for registering as a candidate in the state duma (a kind of legislative house in Russia) as member of the parliament for the sake of parliamentary immunity, but he was stripped of his mandate in 1996.
A Moscow court found him guilty of financial fraud in 2007 and sentenced him to 4 1/2 years in a penal colony leading to the second crash of the scheme.
After being released, Mavrodi launched another pyramid scheme called MMM-2011, calling on investors to purchase so-called Mavro currency units in a bid to get rid of the “unfair” financial system. The project was however halted after a few months.
Between 2011 and 2016, Mavrodi launched Ponzi schemes under the MMM brand in India, China, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria.
The scheme was lauched in early start of 2016, and attracted lots of Nigerians who rushed into it as a result of the economic recession that hit Africa most populous black nation that was similar to was Russia face at that time.
Despite several decry by government and regulated agencies to Nigerians on the dangers in participating in an unregulated scheme such as that offered by sergey mavrodi, many Nigerians turned deaf ears since they felt the scheme could offer a much more higher interest than what the banks could offer.
Many Nigerians participated with their hard earned money. Report has it that some even borrowed huge amount of money to invest into the scheme with the hope of getting a 30 percent return in a month time.
On December 14 2016, participants of the scheme who logged into the MMM website to Get help (GH) as it was called from the money they provided as help(PH), noticed that their matured Mavro(Money) where frozen by the scheme in the name of the scheme closing for the year ended but will reopen on the 14 of January the following fear(2017)
However, their maths did not add up well, as the said scheme opened but never released the huge amount of people’s money that was trapped in the system, resulting to loss of live as some participant committed suicide in the event of this drama.
MICHEAL ANI
