THE FRAUD CALLED MMM

Some days ago, a friend of mine approached me with a "business idea".
Smiling from ear to ear, he tapped me and said: " Stanley, have you heard about MMM"?
Well, the first things that came to my mind were: a wrestling show, a Masters Programme, a rap artiste, an acronym for something I couldn't figure out immediately. I didn't want to leave him standing without giving him at least one of the wrong answers I had in mind.
"It's an acronym for..."
"No, it's not an acronym", he interrupted, pulling up his sleeves to give me a lecture on MMM.

So, in the end, after his long lecture on MMM, I left him with this principle: " If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't".

WHAT IS MMM?

The original MMM was one of the largest Ponzi schemes of all time, orchestrated in 1989 in Russia by convicted fraudster Sergei Mavrodi alongside his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi, and Olga Melnikova. The name of the company was taken from the first letters of the three founders' surnames.
Initially, the company imported computers and office equipment. In January 1992, tax police accused MMM of tax evasion, leading to the collapse of MMM-bank, and causing the company to have difficulty obtaining financing to support its operations. Faced with difficulties in funding its foreign trade, the company switched to the financial sector. It offered American stocks to Russian investors, but met with little success. Later, MMM-Invest was created for the purpose of collecting vouchers during privatisation. This effort was similarly unsuccessful.
MMM created its successful Ponzi scheme in 1994. The company started attracting money from private investors, promising annual returns of up to one thousand percent.
At its peak the company was taking in more than 100 billion rubles (about 50 million USD) each day from the sale of its shares to the public. Thus, the cashflow turnover at the MMM central office in Moscow was so high that it could not be estimated. The management started to count money in roomfuls (1 roomful of money, 2 roomfuls of money, etc.)
On July 22, 1994, the police closed the offices of MMM for tax evasion. For a few days the company attempted to continue the scheme, but soon ceased operations. At that point, Invest-Consulting, one of the company's subsidiaries, owed more than 50 billion rubles in taxes (USD 26 million), and MMM itself owed between 100 billion and 3 trillion rubles to the investors (from USD 50 million to USD 1.5 billion). In the aftermath at least 50 investors, having lost all of their money, committed suicide.
Sergei Mavrodi, one of the founders of MMM was found and arrested in 2003. While in custody, Mavrodi was given until January 31, 2006 to read the documents in his fraud case against him (The criminal case consisted of 650 volumes, each 250-270 pages long).
At the end of April 2007, Mavrodi was convicted of fraud, and given a sentence of four and a half years. Since he had already spent over four years in custody, he was released less than a month later, on May 22, 2007.
He later went on to creating yet another pyramid scheme called MMM-2011.
In 2015 MMM began operating in South Africa with the same business model as MMM-2011, claiming a "30% per month" return through a "social financial network".
In 2016, MMM launched a website targeting the Nigerian audience.

WHAT DOES MMM DO?

MMM claims to just be “a community of people providing each other financial help”.
The basic idea is that you give some money to the community when you join ( called “giving help”) and eventually, the community will give it back to you, plus a lot more ( called “getting help”). They don’t engage in any investment or business activities: you simply give some money and (again, they claim) you magically get more money back.
They use poetic language about selflessness, helping others and destroying the world’s unjust financial system, which probably strike a chord with their target audience and users who fall victim to Ponzi schemes.

WHAT IS A PONZI SCHEME?

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment scheme whereby the scheme pays money to existing investors from contributions by new investors.
Things usually collapse when investments slow down, since the scheme won’t have capital to pay existing investors. That usually triggers a panic, where all investors suddenly ask for their investments (and promised gains) and they realise that there is nothing that will get paid out to them.

HOW DO PEOPLE MAKE PAYMENTS TO MMM?

We suspect that most of the payments (or “giving help”, as it is called by them) are done with cash, due to its untraceable nature.
There is also a spike in attempts using Bitcoin over the past few months, and for those using BitX, have either warned or blocked users who tried to facilitate these types of payments, based on a combination of certain keywords, suspicious bitcoin addresses and so forth.

DOES THE NIGERIAN SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC) ENDORSE MMM?

The Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission issued the following warning:

PUBLIC ALERT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF "MMM" FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA (Nigeria.)

30th August, 2016.

The attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nigeria (“SEC”) has been drawn to the activities of an online investment scheme tagged ‘MMM Federal Republic of Nigeria (nigeria.). The platform has embarked on an aggressive online media campaign to lure the investing public to participate in what it called “mutual aid financial network” with a monthly investment return of 30%

The Commission hereby notifies the investing public that the operation of this investment scheme has no tangible business model hence it’s a PONZI SCHEME where returns are paid from other people’s invested sum. Also, its operation is not registered by the Commission.

The general public is hereby advised to distance themselves from this online scheme. Please note that anyone that subscribe to this illegal activity does so at his/her own risk.

CONCLUSION

You’ve “invested” in MMM and want to get your money back?
By the time you’re reading this, it might sadly already be too late.

There are already many reports of users who can’t log into their MMM accounts (where they “give help” and “request help”) with some MMM-related social media pages that have closed down.
If you’re unsuccessful in getting your funds back, consider filing a report with the relevant authorities. Also, be mindful of future scams and warn others who might fall victim to this sort of thing.
Sadly, this isn’t the first type of investment scam of its type, and it certainly won’t be the last. MMM follows in the wake of similar scams and as long as there are scammers who can keep convincing people of sky-high returns on their investments, we’ll see more of this.

How much were you paid, I can pay you more with MMM

intbizoil:
How much were you paid, I can pay you more with MMM

Forewarned is forearmed.
Break a leg!

There are lots of Co-operative society where members help themselves financially, what has the government done 4 us to help us financially, instead they keep imposing high nepa bills, high tax rate. MMM has come to stay, whether u lyk it or not
Lala: please close this thread #enemyofMMM

Any reasonable person knows MMM is a fraud. The stupid masses will not hear.

chumakk:
Any reasonable person knows MMM is a fraud. The stupid masses will not hear.

you call people stupid for taking tough decisions that would better their lives okay let me enjoy my stupidity

Jst got paid on mmm after 7 weeks on mmm, mmm is d change we seek