THE FULL STORY OF MMM INITIATOR
Sergey
Panteleevich Mavrodi (Russian:born
August 11, 1955) is a Russian criminal and a former deputy
of the State Duma. He is the founder of the МММ
series of pyramid schemes. In
2007 Sergei Mavrodi was found guilty in a Russian court of defrauding 10,000
investors out of 110 million rubles ($4.3 million).
MMM activities
In 1989 he founded MMM. He was then
elected to the State Duma, thereby obtaining parliamentary immunity. Mavrodi
declared MMM bankrupt on December 22, 1997, then disappeared,
and was on the run until his arrest in 2003.
In 1998 Mavrodi created Stock Generation, allegedly a classic pyramid scheme presented as a "virtual stock
market game".
The website ran from 1998 to early 2000. The Massachusetts
district court initially found that U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission was unable to cite Stock
Generation's founders and owners for securities violations. However, the United States
Court of Appeals reversed this decision in 2001, concluding that the
SEC alleged sufficient facts to state a triable claim.
In 2003 the SEC obtained permanent injunctions against SG
Ltd. and relief defendants
SG Perfect and SG Trading, which profited from the disbursement of funds
fraudulently gained by SG Ltd. On April
28, 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 another pyramid scheme
called MMM-2011, asking investors to buy so-called Mavro currency units. READ MORE
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