The greatest fraud in Russian history took place in the mid-90s of the last century. This time was distinguished by the rampant entrepreneurial initiative and the mediocre participation of the state in the economic life of society. It was then, like mushrooms after a warm rain, that "pyramids" appeared - commercial structures that attracted funds from the population under the slogan of obtaining high income. At the same time, high interest rates on investments made were ensured by attracting new funds. Profitability was held hostage by the need for an avalanche-like involvement of more and more new investors. Sergey Panteleevich Mavrodi and his MMM enterprise became a pioneer in setting up such a financial experiment in Russia.
After graduating from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering in 1978, Mavrodi worked at a research institute. However, he soon quit his job and began to engage in business: he continued to illegally produce and sell sound and video recordings, for which in 1983 he was detained for 10 days and even before the initiation of a criminal case was released under the amnesty.
In 1989, the first structure of the future financial empire appeared - the MMM cooperative. The founders of the cooperative were Sergei Mavrodi, his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi and Olga Melnikova. Sergey Mavrodi became the leader and main driving force of the organization. The rest of the founders were nominal and were involved only for the purpose of registering the cooperative. By the initial letters of the names of the founders, the name of the organization was formed - MMM. The cooperative was engaged in the trade of computer and office equipment. The equipment was imported from abroad and sold in the country with a surcharge.
Later, in 1992, OJSC MMM was established. The following year, OJSC MMM registered the first issue of shares in the total amount of 991 thousand shares with a par value of 1 thousand rubles per share. The history of the MMM financial pyramid began with the sale of shares.
Sales started on February 1, 1994. A week later, the organization's management introduced "two-way quotes" for the sale and purchase of shares. Quotations were forcibly increased, which fueled the slogan thrown at the people “today is always more expensive than yesterday”. As a result of the growing excitement, the first issue of shares was implemented in an extremely short time, which led to the emergence of plans for a second issue of shares - already in the amount of one billion shares!
The Ministry of Finance did not give permission to register the second prospectus. Therefore, the management of MMM decided to issue an additional 991 thousand shares on behalf of the new organization - MMM-Funds. After this block of shares was sold out, MMM began to issue so-called “MMM tickets”. This made it possible to bypass legal restrictions on additional issues of securities and to issue into circulation an unlimited number of popular fake shares.
MMM tickets were very similar to Soviet banknotes, which created associations with the recent past among the population and, in their eyes, gave the tickets a deceptive liquidity property. For example, a purple bill with a face value of 1000 MMM tickets looked like Soviet 25 rubles, and a red bill of 50 MMM tickets looked like Soviet 10 rubles. Only instead of a portrait of V. I. Lenin on the MMM tickets was depicted Mavrodi himself. The people called the tickets "shares for the poor." For some time they were used by the population as a means of payment and exchange: they paid for food, clothing and other goods, exchanged them for foreign currency.
In order to attract depositors on TV channels, MMM launched advertising. The country followed the commercials as a captivating series. The plot of the advertising campaign was based on mini-stories from the life of an ordinary Russian man, excavator operator Leni Golubkov, who successfully invested the earned money in MMM shares. By investing in MMM, the main character bought his wife new boots, a fur coat, and traveled across America. Discussing the advantages of investing in MMM shares with his brother Ivan, Golubkov made an argument that became a catch phrase: "I'm not a freeloader, I'm a partner!" In general, many of the statements from the videos were subsequently dismantled into quotes: "I will buy boots for my wife", "MMM is better than a scholarship!", "We are sitting here - and the money goes."
Promotional video:
The simplicity and clarity of advertising did their job. By August 1994, according to various sources, from 2 to 15 million people became MMM contributors. The account of depositors has not been kept, but there is every reason to believe that their number has reached several million people. The price of tickets has increased 127 times compared to their face value. Mavrodi quickly became one of the richest entrepreneurs in Russia. MMM's activities could not fail to attract the attention of the regulatory authorities. Given that at government meetings with representatives of law enforcement services, the Chairman of the Government of the country V. S. Chernomyrdin demanded to deal with MMM, "until everything burst."
According to Mavrodi, on August 3, 1994, a meeting of the Government was held, to which the founder of MMM was invited, but he refused and did not come. And the very next day, August 4, his apartment on Komsomolsky Prospekt in Moscow was stormed by special forces and Mavrodi's detention was shown live on central TV channels. Suspicions of tax evasion became the basis for prompt action. On August 19, 1994, up to 4 thousand MMM depositors went to the White House with calls to release Mavrodi in the hope that he would be able to return their investments. Since that time, Sergei Mavrodi began open confrontation with the state's law enforcement system.
He was allowed to be released by his election campaign for the State Duma. On October 30, 1994, he was elected a deputy and he received immunity from criminal prosecution. Mavrodi threatened to initiate an all-Russian referendum on no confidence in the authorities through the media. According to him, it would not be difficult for him to collect one million votes from his investors to start the referendum procedure. He was repeatedly invited to negotiations in the Kremlin, but he consistently ignored them. A year later, on the proposal of the Prosecutor General's Office, Mavrodi was deprived of his deputy status and parliamentary immunity. In early 1996, the initiative group launched the procedure for nominating him as a candidate for the presidential elections in Russia. However, during the verification of the signatures collected in his support, the Central Election Commission discovered fraud and refused to register Mavrodi as a candidate.
In 1997, Mavrodi disappeared from the visibility of law enforcement agencies. He was put on the national and international wanted list by Interpol. There were rumors that he was hiding in Greece or the Scandinavian countries, while he did not leave Russia anywhere. He lived locked up in a rented apartment in Moscow. While they were looking for him, Mavrodi went international and founded another financial pyramid - the Stock Generation stock exchange. The exchange platform was located on the Internet. The main contributors were residents of Western Europe and the USA. However, as in the situation with MMM, interruptions in payments began, and complaints from depositors began pouring in. The US Securities and Exchange Commission opened a case and blocked Stock Generation's USD accounts. Despite further judicial twists and turns in the American courts,the death of the online exchange could no longer be prevented. Thousands of European and American depositors were affected.
Mavrodi was detained on January 31, 2003 in a Moscow rented apartment. A fake passport in the name of Yuri Zaitsev was found with him. In addition to being charged with tax evasion and / or organization fees, this gave rise to accusations of forging documents. The charges brought were in addition to the main corpus delicti of Mavrodi - fraud.
On December 2, 2003, the court found Mavrodi guilty of forging documents and sentenced him to imprisonment for a period of one year and one month. On January 27, 2004, the tax evasion case was terminated due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for prosecution for this category of crimes. By February 2004, Mavrodi was left with one main charge of large-scale fraud in the framework of MMM's activities.
For 2 years Mavrodi got acquainted with the materials of his criminal case, which consisted of more than 600 volumes. During the process, the prosecutor's office declared damage to depositors in the amount of $ 110 million. The case materials managed to receive more than 10 thousand applications from affected depositors demanding compensation for the damage caused. Mavrodi did not admit his guilt. On April 28, 2007, the Chertanovskiy District Court of Moscow delivered a conviction with imprisonment for a term of 4 years and 6 months. As an additional measure of punishment, the court imposed a fine in favor of the state in the amount of 10 thousand rubles, which was subsequently canceled by a higher instance - the Moscow City Court.
By the time the verdict was pronounced, Mavrodi, while in custody, had almost completely served his term. Therefore, less than a month later, Mavrodi was released. The number of depositors who applied for compensation was increasing. As reported, in May 2008 the total amount of claims against Mavrodi amounted to about 300 million rubles and continued to grow. In order to at least partially satisfy the civil claims of the depositors, the bailiffs arrested the entire circulation of Mavrodi's newly printed book "Temptation". For the same purposes, his entire library, which consisted of more than 1,500 volumes, was withdrawn from Mavrodi's apartment. Also, from the insignificant income of the former businessman, an obligatory part was withheld to pay off debts to depositors.
After his release, Mavrodi repeatedly tried to revive the MMM. In 2011, the most famous pyramid builder launched another financial pyramid - MMM-2011 (a year later it was renamed into MMM-2012). Already in the next 2012, the new pyramid could not provide an uninterrupted return of deposits and at the beginning of 2013 it was disbanded. The fact that Mavrodi directly called MMM-2011 / MMM-2012 a financial pyramid and did not guarantee a refund, in many ways allowed him to avoid new charges of fraud.
Soon there was another revival of MMM. In 2014, Mavrodi initiated a project to create a social and financial network MMM Global Republic of Bitcoin. Organized according to the principle of mutual assistance, MMM structures were formed in a number of countries in Africa, Asia and the United States. When accepting and issuing funds, the Bitcoin system was used. In 2016, the project suffered the same fate as its predecessors. In some countries where the project continued to operate after the announcement of its closure, the project was discontinued over the next couple of years. Thus ended the story of a grandiose deception based on the financial illiteracy of the population and the inability of the authorities to timely prevent its emergence and development.
Author: Alexander Evdokimov
