The wildly popular Ponzi scheme, MMM, the platform has moved to Kenya following the crisis it created in Nigeria.
Many Nigerians were thrown into panic in the morning as the the Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox, MMM, shared a confusing message on its website stating that it has frozen all confirmed Mavros, otherwise known as money due for withdrawal for one month.
According to reports 3 million Nigerians have their money locked up in the MMM system.
Naij.com reports that in Kenya, the scheme has promised a 40% profit for every investment (help provided) by participants unlike the 30% return for people who participated in the pyramid scheme in Nigeria and South Africa.
MMM Kenya domain’s name was registered in 133, Sakura House in Tokyo, Japan with the name “Anonymous Speech.”
Just like Nigeria, MMM Kenya already has a Facebook account and YouTube account.
The Ponzi scheme has already crashed in South Africa and Zimbabwe
Meanwhile a mysterious website has popped up claiming to refund the Nigerians who invested in the scheme.
However, on the MMM Reclaim website, it specified that it will help Nigerian participants reclaim their Mavros.
“Nobody deserves to be made to suffer for helping others. We will help you reclaim your Mavros,” the website said.
To reclaim your Mavros, the site requires you to fill in the name and email you used to register your MMM account but the method of how the investors can reclaim their money is also not specified on the website.
The online platform was unable to trace the operators of the website or confirmed from the guilders in Nigeri if the new website is connected to the scheme.
“I can’t confirm this. I’m just seeing it also. I will get back to you once I have information about this Reclaim website,” he said.
A Familiar Pattern
According to Wikipedia, МММ was a Russian company that perpetrated one of the world’s largest Ponzi schemes of all time, in the 1990s. By different estimates from 5 to 40 million people lost up to $10 billion. The exact figures are not known even to the founders.
MMM took its name from its founder, Sergey Mavrodi. He founded MMM in 1989 and the scheme was declared bankrupt three years later leading to the disappearance of Mavrodi until his arrest in 2003.
He was convicted in 2007 in his home country of defrauding 10,000 investors out of 110 million rubles, the equivalent of $4.3 million. MMM is not his first ‘wonder bank’ creation.
MMM collapsed in Zimbabwe in September 2016 leaving thousands of people, among them civil servants and vendors, with thousands of dollars trapped in the ponzi scheme.
