Who is Mavrodi

Mavrodi Sergey Panteleevich is one of the most famous Russian swindlers who, using the MMM financial pyramid, illegally appropriated deposits of several million people worth more than three billion rubles.

Sergey was born in Moscow in 1955. Among peers since childhood, he was distinguished by a phenomenal memory, showed good abilities in physics and mathematics. After school he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering.

The notorious MMM was founded by Mavrodi back in 1989. Then it was a cooperative that traded in computers and office equipment for rubles, while everyone else did it for dollars. Based on this cooperative, a financial pyramid was created.

MMM shares first went on sale on February 1, 1994. The essence of the pyramid was simple: stocks were sold and bought at prices set personally by Mavrodi and constantly increased. In just six months, the number of depositors grew to 15 million, and the amount of money raised amounted to about a third of the annual budget of the Russian Federation. Stock prices for this period increased 127 times. Daily revenue reached $ 50 million.

On August 4, Mavrodi was arrested for tax evasion, followed by the arrest of property in the company and the suspension of its activities. Last payouts on MMM shares were July 27th.

Subsequently, Mavrodi managed to be released by registering as a deputy in the State Duma. Having promised depositors to return their money if they win the election, Sergey Panteleevich is easily elected to the State Duma and successfully avoids criminal prosecution, thanks to parliamentary immunity. MMM offices, after renaming to the offices of the deputy of Mavrodi, also received immunity status.

However, a year later, Mavrodi, at the initiative of the prosecutor's office, was deprived of a deputy mandate. The investigation against him continued, but he was sentenced only in 2007. Sentence - 10 thousand rubles fine and 4.5 years in prison, which, however, he did not completely serve, and the fine was canceled.

MMM was formally declared bankrupt only in 1997. The most interesting thing is that when payments stopped after July 27, 1994, the MMM offices still continued to work. And media advertising regularly appeared before the end of the terms of advertising contracts. And among the defrauded investors, a secondary MMM stock market emerged.

After Mavrodi was deprived of a deputy mandate and put on the wanted list in 1996, he hid in a rented apartment in Moscow for more than 5 years. During this time, he tried to organize another pyramid - the Stock Generation virtual stock exchange, designed for residents of the United States and Western Europe.

By the time this pyramid ended, the official number of victims was 275 thousand people. The unofficial number is several million. The amount of damage amounted to about 70 million dollars.

In 2011, Mavrodi, having received freedom, founded a new pyramid - MMM-2011. Unlike his first project, here he openly stated that MMM-2011 is a real financial pyramid and that investors can lose all their money at any time.

The main financial instrument of the new pyramid was MAVRO virtual securities. The participants in the system did not buy or sell them, but "rendered assistance" to other participants or "received help" from them.

In May 2012, problems with payments appeared in MMM-2011, as a result of which the activities of MMM-2011 ceased by the end of May. To solve the problems with payments of money already invested by the participants, a new pyramid was created - MMM-2012. But she did not last long. In October 2012, MMM-2012 began its first problems, in December payments stopped, and in January 2013 the system was actually dissolved.

The peculiarity of MMM-2011 and MMM-2012 was that in reality they were neither legal entities nor public organizations. These pyramids were organized on the principle of social networks, Mavrodi originally called his project a pyramid and did not promise a return on investment.

In September 2012, Mavrodi even registered his political party with the speaking name “MMM Party”, which, however, was not registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation and quickly abolished.

Mavrodi also has a family. In 1993, he married Ukrainian Elena Pavlyuchenko, from the marriage with which they had a daughter Oksana Pavlyuchenko. In 2005, in the midst of a judicial investigation into the MMM case, the marriage broke up. In the name of Oksana Pavlyuchenko, the Stock Generation stock exchange was registered. Given that at that time she was a minor, no one was held responsible for the activities of the exchange.

March 26, 2018 Sergey Mavrodi died of a heart attack and was buried on March 31 in a closed coffin in Moscow at the expense of former MMM investors.