25 years ago, in July 1994, the decline of the MMM pyramid began. More than 50 people died under its debris, which its creator Sergey Mavrodi did not regret at all. They hated him, but they were ready to bring him into the Kremlin. He was officially recognized as a fraud, but this did not stop him from building new schemes.
Paradox No. 1. The billionaire turned out to be unmercenary
“The money could not be counted, it was measured by eye, in rooms,” the fraudster himself recalled more than once, talking about the scale of “MMM” in 1994. Mavrodi estimated the size of the attracted money at one third of the Russian budget at that time.
Scheme: Mavrodi's company issued 991 thousand shares. They were sold for a thousand rubles, then "MMM" began to gradually increase the prices for the sale and purchase of shares on the principle "today is always more expensive than yesterday." Mavrodi personally set the quotes twice a week. I took arbitrary numbers. Payments to the participants in the pyramid were made at the expense of newcomers' money.
The shares quickly sold out, and MMM requested an additional issue for a billion rubles, but the Ministry of Finance refused. Then Mavrodi introduced MMM tickets into circulation. Formally, they were not securities, but the company equated the ticket to a hundredth part of the share. They looked like a Soviet chervonets, but instead of Lenin, they had a portrait of Mavrodi.
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Promotions and tickets were on a par with rubles and foreign currency. They were exchanged for food, clothing, etc.
Access to unthinkable amounts didn't seem to change his lifestyle. Neither at that time, nor after that Mavrodi did not find real estate abroad, yachts, airplanes and, in general, at least some luxury goods.
He spent almost his entire life in a three-room apartment on Komsomolsky Prospekt (in Moscow). He got it from parents who died early, and Mavrodi did not even privatize it.
In 2008, the bailiffs came to him and took away the old TV "Rubin" and the library - there was nothing else of value there.
Mavrodi called money paper and said that he had not created a pyramid for enrichment. Moreover, in the early nineties he had money: before that, the MMM company traded in equipment. So successful that:
back in 1991, as an advertising campaign, paid Muscovites a day of free metro rides; in 1993, Mavrodi even addressed the Russians with a New Year's message on TV - as president. He appeared on the screen in a crimson jacket - and soon all the "new Russians" began to dress like that.
Mavrodi claimed that he did not receive any money from the pyramid, and after its collapse and until his arrest in 2003, he lived on savings from the business. After his release, he said that he “received a salary” of $ 500 for consulting one entrepreneur - an adherent of “MMM”.
Half of this amount was written off by the bailiffs - to pay off debts to depositors. Until now, 2,204 cases totaling about 4.5 billion rubles are in progress.
Paradox No. 2. Wished everyone a better life, but did not spare those who died because of MMM
Sergei Mavrodi claimed that in 1994 he was motivated by a desire to "intervene in the plunder of the country" during privatization. He allegedly wanted to use the money collected from the population to buy out the state property put up for sale so that it would go to the people, and not the oligarchs.
According to him, this would make him too significant a political figure, and therefore the authorities decided to eliminate the competitor. “The ship is sailing. A submarine emerges nearby and fires a torpedo. Who is to blame for the fact that the ship sank - its captain or a submarine?”- this is how Mavrodi metaphorically disclaimed responsibility for the collapse of the pyramid.
When asked by journalists if he felt sorry for the MMM depositors who eventually committed suicide, Sergei answered “no”. Once he even added that "he would not care, even if the bill went into thousands and even millions."
The fate of those who lost all their savings in "MMM" did not bother Mavrodi either. “They said to me: 'They were deceived, did not know what they were doing.' But these are adults, capable people! "- he commented on the claims in his address.
The lawyer of the founder of "MMM" Alexander Molokhov called his client insensitive to those close to the autistic, "alien to any emotions and empathy."
Paradox number 3. Perfectly fell into an era that did not correspond
It is widely believed that Mavrodi is a genius in keeping with the spirit of post-Soviet Russia. “His talent could only manifest itself in a troubled transitional time, and then due to a combination of random circumstances, in the rest of the times, Mavrodi could not stand out in anything,” Forbes wrote about him.
But he regularly got out of his era. For example, stylistically: horn-rimmed glasses, unpretentious sweatpants and an unkempt polo shirt - outwardly, he looked more like a physical education teacher from the 1960s-1970s, who left the apartment to throw out the trash, and not a financial tycoon.
At the same time, he constructed the image of a person mentally ahead of his contemporaries. In the 2000s, when he launched a new pyramid ("MMM-2011"), he regularly talked about what was approaching the "financial apocalypse", and called himself the messiah.
Mavrodi argued that modern capitalist society is deeply unfair: people fall into economic slavery to the oligarchs, and then they are "thrown into the trash heap with a $ 100 pension."
The new pyramid, he said, was supposed to destroy this system. About what will grow on the wreckage of the old world, the messiah spoke vaguely: "You will see" - and quoted the Bible.
In parallel with this, Mavrodi let mysticism into his literary works - he became interested in them while still in prison, and so much that he could no longer read other authors.
Hundreds or even thousands of people seem to have believed in Mavrodi's chosenness. This is noticeable in the comments to his interviews on YouTube: the most liked ones say that interviewers are stupid and simply cannot understand the great meaning of the interlocutor's words.
Paradox No. 4. With the stigma of a swindler, he managed to build new pyramids
It was not immediately possible to bring Mavrodi to justice. In August 1994, he was detained for the first time and accused of tax evasion of almost 50 billion rubles. Later Sergey grinned: “What taxes? If the authorities say that this is a pyramid, then I kind of didn't share? Do they even have anything in their heads?"
While behind bars, Mavrodi managed to register as a candidate for the State Duma. This allowed him to be released from custody, and after winning the elections in October 1994, to receive parliamentary immunity.
Sergei refused all the benefits and privileges; he practically did not appear at parliamentary sessions. A year later, he was stripped of his powers. So he lost his immunity. The investigation against "MMM" was resumed, Mavrodi was put on the international wanted list.
They could not find him anywhere, but all this time he lived in a neighboring house, in a rented apartment. To avoid being tracked down, he hired his own security service from former intelligence officers.
From a secluded place, the combinator organized a new pyramid - this time international and on the Internet. It was the Stock Generation virtual stock exchange. It was registered in one of the Caribbean countries and is registered as a gambling game.
The pyramid lasted two years and collapsed in 2000. Mavrodi explained this by the fact that banks could not cope with the issuance of cash, and three depositors complained about this to the US Securities Commission, and the site was closed by court order.
About 275 thousand people suffered from Stock Generation, mostly citizens of the USA and Western Europe.
In 2003, Mavrodi was still tracked down and detained. He served 4.5 years and went out to arrange a financial apocalypse.
He immediately positioned the project "MMM-2011" as a pyramid and warned potential partners: you risk losing all your money. This honesty allowed him to avoid new charges of fraud.
The reincarnated system was different from the previous one. Mavrodi made it decentralized: money was kept not in one place, but on the accounts of individual network members - the so-called foremen (those who managed the money of 10 or more people). Higher in the hierarchy were the centurions, thousanders, and even ten-thousanders.
The newcomer made a regular bank transfer and received a certain amount of virtual currency - Mavro. This took place as a private translation, the parties did not enter into any agreements - the system existed on the confidence of the participants in the pyramid.
If someone wanted to take the money, the foreman bought the Mavro at the current rate - again, Mavrodi determined him twice a week for his own reasons. If there was not enough money, the foreman turned to his centurion, and he found the amount from another foreman.
Mavrodi said that 35 million people were connected to the system in Russia. It is impossible to verify this data. He probably exaggerated the scale, because the collapse of this pyramid took place without scandals.
The fall occurred in waves: at first, the profitability decreased, then a new pyramid appeared, which was supposed to cover the losses of the old participants.
As a result, in 2015, Mavrodi announced the termination of the work of "MMM" in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. He focused on exporting pyramids, opening them in a similar pattern in South Africa and Latin America. In early 2017, the site of the local MMM in Nigeria became more popular than Facebook.
Mavrodi stated that when the whole world falls into the pyramid and switches to Mavro, other currencies will simply not be needed - all operations will take place within the system. The dollar will collapse and a financial apocalypse will ensue.
He called other pyramids a scam.
Paradox # 5. He was supposed to be lynched, but he received frantic support
In 1995, at the railway station in Barnaul, MMM depositors severely beat a man who looked like Mavrodi. It seems that the real organizer of the pyramid had to turn against himself the anger of the whole country, whose people were already in a nervous state due to poverty.
In reality, the defrauded depositors were divided into two camps. The second was made up of those who were ready to follow Mavrodi and after the collapse of "MMM".
On August 19, 1994, crowds of defrauded depositors came to the White House. They demanded the release of the founder of the pyramid - many believed that he would put things right and pay the money.
The position of the creator of "MMM" in the eyes of the population looked incredibly advantageous: the government ruins the people, and Mavrodi helps to survive. “The newspapers write that MMM are swindlers, but I trust them more than the government. What has the government done for us? It only deceived with its monetary reforms,”- a typical commentary of that time.
It is symbolic that the funeral of Mavrodi (he died in March 2018 from a heart attack at the age of 62) was paid by the MMM contributors. Deceived or enriched - history is silent.
Paradox No. 6. I could have become president, but I was lazy
“I could have ordered: 'To the Kremlin,' and a civil war would start. But I didn't want to shed blood,”Mavrodi said about the events of August 1994. And he added: "Perhaps it was a mistake."
He assured that he could change the government peacefully, initiating a referendum on distrust of the government. This required collecting a million signatures. With 15 million depositors, this would not be an obstacle, he believed.
True, when Mavrodi registered as a candidate for the 1996 presidential elections, the Central Election Commission rejected a significant part of the subscription lists in his support and refused to register.
“Probably, I could have become president then, but I didn't want to. I am a homely person, I was too lazy,”said the creator of the pyramid.
Paradox No. 7. He built schemes on trust, but he himself did not trust anyone
Mavrodi was a suspicious person. His lawyer said that Sergei suspected his brother and his wife that they gave the security officials the address of the apartment where he was hiding.
As soon as Mavrodi was imprisoned, he immediately terminated the marriage and ordered his wife not to go on dates with him - apparently, he did not believe in loyalty at a distance. He himself refused to comment on personal topics.
“I was often betrayed. Not because people are bad, but because they are just people,”he said in the spirit of his favorite character - Bulgakov's Woland. And he admitted that he had no friends.
After his release, Mavrodi lived alone, almost never left the house. Almost everyone who knew Sergei personally noted his unhealthy asceticism and misanthropy. But this did not prevent him from finding a common language with people. “I do not like communication, but everyone tells me that I am charming. Well, I'm a crook. Fraudsters are supposed to be charming,”he grinned.
Where did the MMM money go?
This remains unknown. Mavrodi himself said that after his arrest, the security forces took out 17 KamAZ trucks with cash only from the company's central office, and after that they "disappeared without a trace."
There are versions that the founder managed to withdraw large sums from the pyramid, including offshore. But there is no official confirmation of this.
Most experts tend to believe that the beneficiaries of his pyramids were a small group of people who were withdrawing money on the eve of the collapse. Some even call these unknown authors the real fraudsters, and Mavrodi is just a puppet.
The schemer himself denied his connections with anyone and said that "all really large and large-scale cases are done only alone."
Author: Ivan Kemerov
