hroughout the 20th century, there have been countless attempts of financial fraud around the world. As time went by, these scammers became more and more ingenious with their schemes, but one of them takes the platinum medal for developing the most elaborate Ponzi scheme that the world has ever seen, leaving over 30 million people bankrupt in a matter of a few years.
Sergei Mavrodi was born in 1955 in Moscow. From a young age, he was very good at math and decided to pursue a career in finance. Sergei was quite an introvert who didn’t really like people and he always kept to himself. What Sergei really liked was money and he could not get enough of it.
In 1983, he was arrested for various financial frauds whilst working for a small company. The sum of money he had taken for himself was quite small so he was let off after 10 days in prison. Since then Sergei started to plan his grand Ponzi scheme.
MMM Organisation
In 1989, Sergei and his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi, as well as Olga Melnikova, founded the MMM company. The three letters are taken from each of the founder’s surnames. The company started by importing computers, quite good business in Russia at the time especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Business went well, but as someone who loves financial frauds, the company was accused in 1992 of tax evasion leading to the collapse of their financial support. With…
