A new subscriber, John Eyighator, says that he is joining the scheme just because everyone is doing it. “My colleague made N300,000 last week and I have heard many other people that are saying good things about it. No bank can give me that kind of money, so I decided to try it. I put in N100,000 this week, immediately they confirm me, I should be able to make over N60,000.
These are just a few of those we spoke to who all have something positive to say about the scheme. However, there should be a source for concern.
Unanswered Questions
There are some things about MMM that does not add up, which subscribers should be aware of. Firstly, Mavrodi Mundial Movement is not registered as a company in Nigeria. If a company is helping others legally then they should not find it difficult to register the company and even have an office.
However, a user countered this point. According to Ity, solutions owner who is also a ‘Guardian’ (people with large number of subscribers under them) with MMM, he says “As for MMM not being registered legally, you should know that MMM is a donation system, there is nothing illegal about donations. All monies are being transferred peer-to-peer.” He asks that his name is not published.
Secondly, it is not explained where that 10 percent that is given to new subscribers comes from. The scheme is pretty simple, but there is the question of where the funding for the 10 percent given to first time users comes from. It only means that the operators of MMM are also involved one way or the other.
Also, when we looked into the history of the founder of the scheme, Sergey Mavrodi, not much can be said about his financial history. The only thing positive to his credit is that fact that he is a very good mathematician.
Apparently, MMM is not the first scheme that Mavrodi has created. He founded the first scheme in 1989 but it later crashed and was sentenced to prison. He was then elected a local council member in Russia while in prison so he was released due to the immunity he got from his election. Mavrodi declared MMM bankrupt on December 22, 1997, then disappeared, and was on the run until his arrest in 2003.
Wikipedia also said he was deported from USA for fraudulent dealings and in 2007, a Moscow court sentenced him to four and a half years in a penal colony. The court also fined him 10,000 rubles ($390).
In January 2011, Mavrodi launched this current pyramid scheme called MMM scheme which has lasted till today. This time, he targeted third world countries including India, Latin America and countries in Africa including Nigeria. Today, Nigeria has the highest number of MMM subscribers in Africa.
Also, subscribers need to be afraid that the scheme may well be on its way to a big crash. This is because it has already crashed in Zimbabwe and many lost all their life savings. This is reminiscent of what happened in Russia.
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