MMM stands for Mavrodi Mondial Moneybox and it was founded in 1989 by Sergei Mavrodi, his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi, and Olga Melniko

MMM stands for Mavrodi Mondial Moneybox
After a rapid growth of the company, it all came crashing in 1994 when the police closed down MMM over tax evasion. The company was owing its investors $50m-$1.5bn. This made about 50 of the MMM investors commit suicide as they couldn’t cope with the huge loss of money. According to Wikipedia, the company was involved in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in the 1990s. It was estimated that thousands of people lost up to $10 billion dollars.

Sergey Panteleevich Mavrodi is a Russian criminal and a former deputy of the State Duma. He is the official face, creator and founder of МММ
MMM prides itself on the success of a nonexistent enterprise achieved by the payment of quick returns to the first set of investors from money invested by later investors. Investors are paid certain percentage of the money they put into the scheme after some days. Although the scheme doesn’t make any profit, it pays older investors with the money from newer investors. We can say it’s a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

No wonder the Chinese government banned MMM in January 2016. Mavrodi himself is reported to have gone into hiding after a separate entity designed to reward investors with the cryptocurrency bitcoin – dubbed the “Republic of Bitcoin” – folded in April this year.