The founder of the legendary financial pyramid "MMM" died on the night of March 26. Until the end of his days, the swindler was devoted to his work - he continued to “give people hope and the opportunity to make money,” organizing more and more pyramids around the world. In the 90s, he was a deputy and even ran for president of Russia; millions of Russians suffered from his brainchild, to whom he owed millions of rubles. The main milestones of the great schemer are in the material.

Sergei Mavrodi died in the Botkin hospital from a heart attack. According to one information, he became ill at a bus stop on Polikarpov Street, and a random passer-by gave him an ambulance; according to another, he was hospitalized from his own apartment on Komsomolsky Prospekt.

The future genius of financial pyramids was born on August 11, 1955 in Moscow in the family of installer Pantelei Andreevich Mavrodi and economist Valentina Fedorovna. Sergei Mavrodi said that as a child, doctors diagnosed him with a bilateral heart defect, and after the diagnosis he was promised “a maximum of 18 years.” After graduating from school, Sergei entered the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering (MIEM) at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics.

Photo: Vasily Shaposhnikov / Kommersant

“We turned a blind eye to absenteeism. The faculty was considered extremely complex, the department of mathematics at MIEM was then, for a number of reasons, the strongest, perhaps, among all Moscow universities, the level of teaching was very high, so it was a priori assumed that if a person does not go to lectures and seminars, he simply -simply won’t pass the exams. It turned out, however, that this is not entirely true. If I managed to get hold of the lecture notes at least a couple of hours before the exam and had time to skim through it, then I passed the exam without any problems,” Mavrodi said about his studies.

The university instilled in Mavrodi an entrepreneurial spirit and passion - it was then that he became interested in making and selling copies of audio and video materials, as well as games popular with mathematicians - chess and poker. Mavrodi received his first sentence for selling video copies: in 1983, employees of the Department for Combating the Theft of Socialist Property (OBKhSS) detained him for ten days for “private business activities.” However, the young entrepreneur was lucky: the decree “On Excesses” had just been issued, and Mavrodi managed to avoid a criminal case.

“I'm not a freeloader! I'm a partner!

The famous financial pyramid originates from the MMM cooperative, which Mavrodi founded in 1989. The abbreviation “MMM” is the first letters of the surnames of the company’s founders - Sergei Mavrodi, his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi and Olga Melnikova. The financier himself admitted that he needed the other two founders solely to register the company; their positions were nominal.

MMM started as an ordinary company - with the import of computers and components. Over the next five years, the company tried almost everything: resale of office equipment, equipment, promotion and advertising, stock trading, organizing beauty contests and voucher privatization. On October 20, 1992, JSC MMM was registered - the same organization that later became the famous financial pyramid.

In 1993, MMM issued 991 thousand shares worth one thousand rubles each. They went on sale on February 1, 1994. Against the backdrop of ongoing privatization and the frankly weak financial literacy of the population, Mavrodi managed to quickly attract the interest of “investors” to his securities. Securities were sold under the slogan “today is always more expensive than yesterday”: those hungry for profit invested their money, increasing and increasing demand.

A significant part of MMM's investors was brought in by an aggressive advertising campaign, the hero of which was a simple guy played by a theater and film actor. In the first commercial, he decides to invest in MMM to buy boots for his wife, and in the last one he is already a successful investor who is thinking about developing his own business. Permyakov admitted that he really liked this role. He received $200-250 per day of filming.

MMM tried to organize another project for issuing shares of the company worth one billion, but this project was blocked, which was not part of Mavrodi’s plans. He released another 991 thousand shares and sold them according to a similar scheme. To circumvent the Russian authorities' ban on the issue of shares, Mavrodi introduced MMM tickets into circulation. In appearance, they resembled the Soviet chervonets, where instead of the image of Vladimir Lenin there was a portrait of Sergei Mavrodi. Despite the external similarity between “tickets” and real money, the “MMM” paper had no real value. Mavrodi announced that the price of one ticket was initially equal to one hundredth of a share of JSC MMM.

The documented registration of the sale and purchase carried the risk of litigation with Mavrodi, so the ticket sales scheme was radically changed: now tickets were not purchased, but were given out as a souvenir in exchange for a “monetary donation” to Sergei Mavrodi. This “rule” worked similarly if one of the ticket holders wanted to sell them: in this case, Mavrodi “donated” his money to the seller, receiving the tickets back. The cost of MMM tickets grew at an insane rate - by the summer of 1994 they had grown 127 times, and, according to various estimates, from 2 to 15 million people became contributors to the pyramid. Mavrodi himself earned about $50 million a day.

From swindler to president

The popularity of Sergei Mavrodi and the frantic growth of investors in the financial pyramid irritated the federal authorities. Mavrodi openly ignored the demands of financial authorities and continued to take money from ordinary citizens. tried to recover about 50 billion rubles from MMM, but the financier claimed that his company had paid all taxes. Then the authorities decided to conduct an anti-advertising campaign. Videos in the style of “MMM” appeared on television: officials from various departments claimed that “MMM” is a scam in which you can lose everything. The start of the anti-campaign was given personally by the President of Russia, who stated: “Lenya Golubkov will not buy a house in Paris.”

The actions of the authorities provoked panic and a sharp outflow of depositors from MMM. Mavrodi had to react quickly to this: on July 29, 1994, MMM announced a reduction in ticket prices by 100 times and an increase in the rate of increase in ticket prices by a factor of two, which Mavrodi personally spoke about in television programs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The restart of the pyramid allowed Mavrodi not only to retain old investors, but also to attract new ones - the demand for tickets and shares only grew. As a result, the authorities had to use force: on August 4, 1994, Mavrodi was arrested for tax evasion in his apartment on Komsomolsky Prospekt; the arrest of the swindler was shown live on federal channels. At the same time, riot police officers stormed the main office of MMM on Varshavskoye Shosse and conducted a search there. Mavrodi claims that the authorities removed 17 KamAZ trucks with cash from the head office; Where this money went and who took it out is still unclear.

Photo: Vladimir Fedorenko / RIA Novosti

After his arrest, Mavrodi suspended the activities of the financial pyramid and announced his intention to be elected to the State Duma. Citizens demanded that the authorities release Mavrodi so that he could resume the work of MMM, or force the tax authorities to return the savings of depositors. In October 1994, Sergei Mavrodi was released. He became a State Duma deputy, and all MMM offices turned into representative offices of the deputy and became inviolable.

A year later, he was deprived of his mandate for systematic absenteeism (Mavrodi did not appear at a single meeting) and continued commercial activities, but already on January 10, 1996, the financier submitted documents to register his candidacy for the presidential election. Mavrodi was not allowed to wedge himself into the presidential race: he rejected signature sheets in favor of Mavrodi and withdrew his candidacy from the elections.

Got it

The attempt to become president of Russia had a simple explanation: Mavrodi tried to protect himself from criminal prosecution, which was resumed in 1996. In September 1997, MMM was declared bankrupt, and Mavrodi himself disappeared. In 1998, the authorities put the swindler on the international wanted list, but this did not help. He was detained only on January 31, 2003 in a rented apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment. During the search, it turned out that he had been living for a long time using forged documents in the name of .

The fake passport added another case against Mavrodi: he was accused of fraud on an especially large scale and organizing the forgery of documents, and the first criminal case (“On tax evasion” in the amount of about 50 billion rubles) was closed due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. The total debt to investors, according to estimates by the Federal Bailiff Service (FSSP), was 520 million rubles, but these calculations were made based on data from 10 thousand victims; in fact, there were 10-15 million investors, so the figures look frankly underestimated.

On December 2, 2003, the court found Mavrodi guilty of forging a passport and sentenced him to 13 months in prison. Later, on April 28, 2007, he was sentenced to 4.5 years in the fraud case. Mavrodi served most of his sentence in a pre-trial detention center, and a month after the verdict, on May 22, he was released. The court also ordered Mavrodi to pay a fine of 10 thousand rubles and repay a debt of 20 million rubles to former MMM depositors. After Mavrodi’s appeal, the court decided to waive the fine altogether in favor of the state.

We can a lot

After his imprisonment, Sergei Mavrodi for some time was interested in writing and promoting his own books, the proceeds from the sales of which were used to pay off debts to investors. However, in 2011, when they began to forget about him, Mavrodi decided to shake up the old days in a new guise - he created MMM-2011, which first issued MMM dollars, and later virtual securities called MAVRO. The financial pyramid system was similar to the classic “paper” one: old investors made a profit by attracting new ones. Depending on the increase in the project’s audience, the monthly profitability of “investors” ranged from 10 to 100 percent.

In June 2012, Mavrodi closed MMM-2011 and launched MMM-2012. Even an aggressive advertising campaign did not help. This time it was not possible to get much airtime, but no one stopped Mavrodi from purchasing advertising on billboards and on the Internet. In the new videos, an old hero appeared - Lenya Golubkov, who burned out on the pyramids in the 90s. His son comes to him, gives him a few hundred dollars to live on and talks about the advantages of Mavrodi’s new financial pyramid. At the end of the video, Golubkov agrees to take his son’s money and invest it in MMM-2011.

Moreover, Mavrodi decided to go into politics again, trying to register the “MMM Party”, but in the absence of a large number of investors, he did not find the support of a wide audience in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union - he had to look for new markets.

Bitcoin was shaking

In 2014, Mavrodi abandoned his usual market and transformed his own project into “MMM Global” - now it was positioned as a “financial social network”, each participant of which can help themselves and others. Initially, the new pyramid scheme was based on the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. In 2015, Mavrodi, which could collapse the rate of the most popular cryptocurrency of 2017. The cryptocurrency trading volumes are so large solely thanks to MMM Global, the financier assured, so changing the rules for attracting new investors will collapse the rate.

“Financial Social Network” began operating in almost a hundred countries around the world, including South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, China, Ghana, Kenya, Brazil, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Australia and Turkey. MMM Global promised its investors a stable 30 percent return per month. Depending on the country, the system for raising funds was slightly different, but the gist was this: MMM attracts money, promising an average monthly return of 30 percent; the money received is recorded in the depositors' accounts and transferred first to bitcoins, and then to Mavro - an electronic analogue of the MMM ticket from the 90s. Investors also received income from “investing” in Mauro; those who managed to convert them back into bitcoins or local currency were lucky; those who did not have time were ruined.

Mavrodi's greatest success was in Nigeria, where the popularity of the pyramid, as well as the consequences of its collapse, were comparable to the Russian experience. About 2.4 million depositors were registered in the system at the end of 2016, mostly unemployed and people with low incomes. As a result, MMM once again made enemies in the form of local media, bloggers and government authorities, who began to check the work of the project. The scale of investment for an African state was unprecedented: as of March 2017, MMM had raised 18 billion naira (about $60 million) in Nigeria. In addition to the authorities, even local religious organizations opposed the pyramid - the reason was mass suicides of those who did not manage to withdraw their funds from the financial pyramid.

Mavrodi effect

The performer of the role of Leni Golubkov in the MMM commercials, Vladimir Permyakov, said that Sergei Mavrodi was “a kind of hope, a ray of light” for Russians. According to the artist, the creator of MMM was a talented but unclaimed businessman who was “begun to be attacked” by the government led by Russian President Boris Yeltsin for the sake of promoting State short-term bonds (GKOs) - a pyramid of loans that subsequently collapsed and resulted in a default in 1998. The actor is sure that Mavrodi was “crushed from above,” since the then authorities saw a real danger in him.

Mavrodi is known far beyond Russia. The founder of the largest financial pyramid in the history of our country, MMM, is treated differently today. Some call him a brilliant entrepreneur, others call him a swindler who embezzled the money of millions of people. Despite such opposing assessments, Mavrodi’s biography still does not cease to interest society. Sergei’s personal life deserves special attention, because his legal wife was fashion model and beauty contest winner Elena Pavlyuchenko.

Mavrodi's wife's family

Pavlyuchenko Elena Aleksandrovna was born in the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye on June 7, 1969. The girl’s mother worked as an engineer, her father was a candidate of technical sciences, and headed a laboratory at the Titanium Research Institute. Later, the Pavlyuchenko couple had another daughter, who was named Oksana.

School years

Lena Pavlyuchenko grew up as a quiet and uncommunicative child. She was an ordinary girl with pigtails and stood out among her classmates except for her more attractive appearance. Pavlyuchenko studied at school No. 92 in the city of Zaporozhye. In elementary and middle school, Lena had good academic performance, but before graduating from school, grades began to appear in her diary. The girl's favorite subjects were literature and history, but she did not like physical education. In her free time from classes, Mavrodi’s future wife attended a music school and a theater studio.

Participation in a beauty contest

After graduating from school, Lena entered the philological faculty of the Zaporozhye Pedagogical Institute in absentia, which she later dropped out of, and at the same time got a job as a nanny in a kindergarten. In 1989, the girl, who by this time had turned into a real beauty, decided to take part in the Miss Zaporozhye competition. Pavlyuchenko, who had studied at a theater studio, managed to present herself favorably and easily made it to the top ten finalists. According to eyewitnesses, Elena wore the most expensive outfits at the competition. There were rumors that she was the protégé of a rich and influential man, but his name was not disclosed. The girl was accompanied to the competition by her mother. She tried to put pressure on the jury to award the victory to her daughter. However, despite all her efforts, another contestant took first place. Elena received the title “Vice Miss”.

Elena Pavlyuchenko was angry at the loss and decided to take revenge on the organizers and participants of the competition. She raised a loud scandal, declaring that during her performance, precious earrings disappeared from her dressing room, and wrote a statement to the police. Everyone related to the competition was searched and summoned to law enforcement agencies for questioning, but the jewelry was never found. It was obvious that no one stole the girl’s earrings, but everyone who was suspected of abduction had to endure unpleasant humiliation. Elena’s mother could not calm down for a long time because of her daughter’s loss and even tried to challenge the results of the competition in court.

Moving to the capital, meeting Mavrodi

In the early 90s, Elena came to conquer Moscow and appeared in Yuri Nikolaev’s popular television competition “Morning Star”. His jury included Sergei Mavrodi, who was struck on the spot by the beauty and talent of the young Cossack woman. The founder of the financial pyramid at that time was selecting photo models for MMM advertising and invited Lena to take part in the filming. Soon Pavlyuchenko becomes the face of the company and the bride of the rich man Mavrodi. Especially for his beloved, the millionaire organized international beauty contests, in which she became the winner. Having won many titles, Lena headed the MMM-Models modeling agency founded by Sergei.

Family life

According to the recollections of Pavlyuchenko herself, she and Mavrodi were in no hurry to register their relationship and got married only in October 1993, when he began to have serious problems with the law. However, even after the marriage was registered, they were not much like ordinary spouses. Sergei Mavrodi lived separately from his young wife and met with her from time to time. In one of his interviews, he stated that he could not imagine how it was possible to live with a woman in the same apartment.

Soon after the wedding, the newly minted Mrs. Mavrodi began to head one of the MMM departments, receiving a huge salary for her work. But that was not her main mission. When Sergei, hiding from criminal liability, led the life of a recluse, Elena provided him with contact with all the necessary people and monitored the flow of money. There are rumors that it was she who handed her husband over to law enforcement agencies in exchange for their promise to turn a blind eye to her sins. And they were connected not only with the activities of the wife of the “financial genius” in MMM.

Child abduction case

In March 2001, 32-year-old Elena Pavlyuchenko-Mavrodi was detained in the capital on suspicion of abducting a newborn child who was being treated there. The one-and-a-half-month-old baby was taken out of the building by a clinic employee and handed over to two ladies in a Nissan parked nearby. As it later turned out, one of the women in Mavrodi’s car was Elena, and the other was her 38-year-old friend from the modeling business. It was for the latter that the baby was intended.

Research institute employees suspected that they were preparing to kidnap a baby, so they were on alert. Noticing how the attending physician took her little patient outside without permission and handed him over to unknown women, they raised the alarm. Soon the Nissan was stopped and its passengers were taken to the police station. It turned out that Pavlyuchenko’s infertile friend planned to illegally adopt the baby. Elena, who had connections at the research institute, volunteered to help her and organized the entire operation. However, during the investigation, Elena’s friend changed her testimony and stated that she took the baby out of the research institute for just a few hours in order to show it to her lover and force him to marry her. The suspects confused the investigation so much that as a result they were not charged with anything, and the criminal case was closed due to lack of evidence.

Running for the State Duma

The scandal with the attempted kidnapping of a child is not the only dark spot in the biography of the wife of the creator of MMM. In the second half of the 90s, Elena Pavlyuchenko tried to make a political career. Mavrodi’s wife ran for State Duma deputy 3 times, but twice her candidacy was withdrawn on the eve of the vote due to bribery of voters, and the last time she was unable to get the required number of votes.

Life after divorce

Elena Pavlyuchenko’s marriage to Mavrodi lasted until 2005. After divorcing her husband, she changed her name and appearance and disappeared from the media. According to people familiar with Sergei, his ex-wife and her mother live today in their own house in the Moscow region. She is engaged in whose father is Mavrodi, and does not give interviews.

The younger sister and her connections with Mavrodi

If Elena was Sergei’s wife, then her sister Oksana Pavlyuchenko was his partner in creating financial scams. Arriving in Moscow after her sister, the girl graduated from the Plekhanov Institute, receiving a specialty. All the time while Oksana was studying in the capital, she lived at the expense of her sister’s husband. In the late 90s, together with Mavrodi, an enterprising girl organized a virtual exchange on the Internet, to the account of which visitors transferred substantial sums.

After existing for some time, the exchange disappeared without a trace. In 2000, Oksana and Sergey were put on the wanted list by Interpol, but after a US court decided that the scam created by scammers was an ordinary computer game in which there could be losers and winners, the case was closed. Having escaped a well-deserved punishment, Pavlyuchenko Jr. got married and remained in Moscow. She is not hiding from anyone, but, like her older sister Elena, she categorically refuses to communicate with media representatives.

In contact with

Classmates

On March 26, 2018, the creator of the MMM financial pyramid, Sergei Mavrodi, died in the capital’s hospital No. 67 at the age of 63.

Sergei Panteleevich Mavrodi was born on August 11, 1955 in Moscow in the family of installer Pantelei Andreevich and economist Valentina Fedorovna Mavrodi.

In 1978, he graduated from the Faculty of Applied Mathematics of the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering (now the Moscow State Institute of Electronics and Mathematics as part of the National Research University Higher School of Economics).

After graduating from university, Mavrodi worked for several years at one of the capital's closed research institutes, from where he left in 1981. Then he began to secretly produce and sell audio recordings, officially working as a night watchman in the metro. In 1983, he was detained on charges of profiteering; as punishment, he was sentenced to administrative arrest for 10 days.

In 1988, together with his younger brother Vyacheslav and his friend Marina Muravyova, he created the cooperative “MMM” (the name is made up of the first letters of the last names of the creators). Initially, the cooperative was engaged in the trade of imported office equipment; thanks to active advertising, in 1991 it was the leader in Russia in this area. On November 5, 1991, MMM registered its own commercial bank (liquidated in 1994).

At the beginning of 1992, the State Tax Service suspected MMM of tax evasion. Sergei Mavrodi abandoned the trading business and on October 20, 1992 registered the check investment fund OJSC (open joint stock company) MMM-Invest, and then other structures (OJSC MMM, JSC MMM-Funds, etc.). In February 1993, he began accepting privatization checks (vouchers) from people across the country, promising investors super profits of 1000% per annum. In practice, MMM functioned as a financial pyramid: income to old investors was paid from the entrance fees of new ones. Despite this, part of the money was invested in real assets: minority stakes were acquired in AvtoVAZ, the Tomsk Petrochemical Plant, etc.

Sergei Mavrodi attracted investors with active advertising in the media and high-profile promotions, for example, he sponsored City Day in Moscow in 1994. The main character of the series of television commercials was the quickly rich “man of the people” Lenya Golubkov, whose role was played by actor Vladimir Permyakov.

“MMM” reached its peak of fame by the end of 1993: MMM shares and additional “tickets” issued by Mavrodi quickly rose in price, their quotes were published in central newspapers and on television.

At the end of July 1994, MMM was again accused of tax evasion in the amount of 49.9 billion rubles. On July 29, Sergei Mavrodi announced a decrease in the value of shares by 127 times, from 127 to 1 thousand rubles. This resulted in panic among investors and further depreciation of MMM securities. The exact amount of damage caused to the Russian economy by MMM’s activities has not been announced.

On August 4, 1994, riot police stormed the main office of MMM in the capital, the company's cash desk was arrested, and Sergei Mavrodi was taken into custody on charges of tax evasion. At the same time, many of the investors spoke out in his defense, since they were confident that the state, as well as representatives of law enforcement agencies, were to blame for the collapse of MMM. In essence, this indicated the collapse of the pyramid, but the company was officially liquidated only in 1997. In total, according to various estimates, from 10 to 15 million Russians invested money in MMM; the damage in 2007 was estimated at 110 million rubles. (about $4 million). The shares of AvtoVAZ and other companies purchased by MMM were returned to the state.

In 1994-1995, Sergei Mavrodi was a deputy of the State Duma of the first convocation. In September 1994, he was nominated by an initiative group of citizens, after which he was released from arrest. In the by-elections on October 30, 1994, he was elected in the Mytishchi single-mandate constituency (Moscow region) to replace deputy Andrei Aizderdzis, who was killed in April 1994. Mavrodi was not a member of the Duma factions, remaining an independent deputy. He was a member of the International Affairs Committee.

In 1994, together with political strategists Andrei Bogdanov (a candidate in the 2008 presidential elections in Russia) and Valentin Poluektov, he founded the People's Capital Party. It did not take part in the 1995 Duma elections and was soon liquidated.

On April 7, 1995, the State Duma, at the request of the Prosecutor General of Russia, attempted to deprive Sergei Mavrodi of parliamentary immunity in connection with the initiation of another criminal case against him for financial fraud. But 17 votes were not enough to lift immunity (“283 parliamentarians voted in favor, with the required minimum of 300 votes”). On October 6, 1995, Sergei Mavrodi’s parliamentary powers were terminated early due to “neglect of deputy duties and engagement in commercial activities.” But the criminal case against him was then suspended.

In 1996, Mavrodi put forward his candidacy for the post of President of Russia, but was not registered by the Central Election Commission due to forgery of most of the signatures. After this, Sergei Mavrodi stopped appearing in public.

In 1998, together with his cousin Oksana Pavlyuchenko, he launched a financial pyramid via the Internet, which was called Stock Generation and was focused on the American market. By the time of the crash in 2000, a total of approximately 20 thousand Americans had suffered from it.

In December 1997, the criminal case against Sergei Mavrodi was resumed, and the creator of MMM was put on the international wanted list. On January 31, 2003, he was detained in his apartment in the capital. It turned out that he had recently been living on a false passport in the name of Yuri Zaitsev.

On December 2, 2003, the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow sentenced Sergei Mavrodi under Article 325 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Theft or damage to documents”) to 13 months in prison.

The tax evasion case was closed in 2007 due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

On April 28, 2007, the Chertanovsky Court of Moscow found Sergei Mavrodi guilty of fraud (clause 3 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). He was sentenced to 4.5 years in a general regime colony, as well as a fine of 10 thousand rubles. In addition, the court ordered him to pay 20 million rubles. defrauded investors (in total, over 10 thousand people were recognized as victims). At the time of sentencing, Sergei Mavrodi had been in custody for 4 years and 5 months; accordingly, he was released on May 22, 2007.

In November 2008, the chief bailiff of Russia noted that through the sale of property, Sergei Mavrodi was able to gain about 18 million rubles.

On January 25, 2011, Sergei Mavrodi announced in his blog the founding of a new project - “MMM-2011” (the name this time stood for “We can do a lot”). The project again functioned as a financial pyramid: Mavrodi promised investors up to 100% per annum, however, unlike MMM in the 1990s, the system worked only through the Network, without a single center and accounts. Investors transferred funds directly to the “foremen” of the system, and they also kept records. Mavrodi himself stated that he does not receive income from MMM-2011 and directly said that the project is a financial pyramid. The Russian authorities did not bring any charges against him.

On February 3, 2011, the Federal Antimonopoly Service reported that the MMM-2011 scheme had signs of fraud. On February 16, 2011, access to Sergei Mavrodi’s website was banned by a decision of the Central Court of Volgograd; subsequently, the blocking was supported by courts in other Russian regions.

In the spring of 2012, the influx of newcomers to MMM-2011 no longer ensured payments to old investors; they began to take money from the pyramid. On May 24, 2012, Sergei Mavrodi announced the “reorganization” of the pyramid, founding MMM-2012, which worked according to the same scheme. The system began to work, in addition to Russia, in other CIS countries. Soon after this, Mavrodi founded a number of other pyramids under the MMM brand, mainly working in the CIS countries, and then in Africa and Southeast Asia, while he himself practically removed himself from project management.

Estimates of the number of affected investors of all these pyramids in Russia and other countries of the world have not been published. Last year, the number of Nigerian investors in the bankrupt African pyramid scheme MMM Global was estimated at 3 million people. At the end of the year before last, MMM Global launched a personal cryptocurrency – Mavro. Its unit cost as of March 26 of this year is $0.08.

On September 16, 2012, at the founding congress of the MMM political party, he was elected chairman of the association. But the Russian Ministry of Justice did not register the party.

Sergei Mavrodi is the author of the books “Temptation” (2008), “PiraMMMida” (2011), “Son of Lucifer” (2011), “Temptation-2” (2012). “PiraMMMida” formed the basis of the film of the same name, directed by Eldar Salavatov in 2011. The main character of the film, Sergei Mamontov, in whom the features of Mavrodi are easily visible, was played by Alexey Serebryakov.

It was noted that Mavrodi was married, his wife was called Elena Mavrodi (maiden name - Pavlyuchenko). Some media reported that the couple has a daughter, but her name is unknown.

Name: Sergey Mavrodi

Age: 69 years old

Place of Birth: Moscow

A place of death: Moscow

Activity: entrepreneur, founder of MMM JSC

Family status: divorced

Sergei Mavrodi - biography

This man with horn-rimmed glasses and a worn-out shirt was called differently: a brilliant manager, the greatest swindler, and even the future president of Russia. He himself loved being compared to Lucifer: they say, both tempted many souls...

The era of the “dashing nineties” is remembered by people as a time of criminal lawlessness, widespread poverty and financial pyramids. Here everything was like in the fairy tale about Pinocchio: you need to take the money and wait until there is more of it. The largest “tree” under which people “buried” money was called “MMM”.

The Moscow Mavrodi family did not stand out in any way: the father was an electrician, the mother was an economist at a factory. Their unusual surname, which many took for Jewish, is of Greek origin and translated means “dark.” It is difficult to say how much this influenced the children, but the eldest son Sergei believed that he had an invisible connection with the Prince of Darkness himself.

Immediately after his birth, the doctors “delighted” the parents: the baby had a heart defect and there was almost no chance of surviving to adulthood. But the years passed, and Seryozha did not experience any health problems. Moreover, he practiced sambo and, according to him, became the champion of Moscow among youth. His memory was phenomenal, but numerous concussions deteriorated it to an average level.

Nevertheless, Sergei studied well, and was even a prize-winner at mathematics olympiads. After school I decided to go to the Moscow Physics and Technology Institute, but failed the entrance exam in physics. Entered the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Applied Mathematics. However, studying like everyone else was not in Mavrodi’s character. Already in his first year, he began to skip classes, and only his talent for mathematics saved him from expulsion.

Having received his diploma, Mavrodi was assigned to a closed research institute. Working in a “mailbox” turned out to be not to my liking. After working for the required three years, Sergei quit and, in order not to attract the attention of law enforcement agencies, got a job as a watchman in the metro. And he made money by copying pirated videos. In 1983, 28-year-old Mavrodi was detained for the first time. But a day later, the CPSU Central Committee issued a resolution “On excesses,” and he was released.

Perestroika became a time of great hope. But the cautious Mavrodi was in no hurry to legalize the business. Only in 1989 did he decide to officially register the MMM cooperative.

The field of activity of MMM was initially listed as trading in computers and office equipment, and then advertising, exchange activities and even transactions with vouchers. It was the voucher business that gave Mavrodi the idea of ​​creating a financial pyramid. Of course, he was not a pioneer in this matter: Carlo Ponzi was the first to try this scheme in 1919 in the USA. Returns to early investors are determined by the contributions of later customers. The scheme works as long as new people deposit their money, from which dividends are paid to previous investors.

At the end of 1993, MMM issued almost a million shares with a par value of 1,000 rubles. They went on sale on February 1, 1994. At first, tickets were purchased cautiously, but Sergei poured money into advertising and away we went. The video with Lenya Golubkov and his phrase “I am not a freeloader, I am a partner” became epoch-making.

Every week Mavrodi announced an increase in the share price. In six months, the cost of paperwork has increased 127 times! It is not surprising that people rushed to buy Mavrodi tickets. Cash was brought from the regions by bus. According to experts, Mavrodi received $50 million daily.

The frightened Ministry of Finance did not give permission for the second issue of shares, but it did not issue shares, but MMM tickets, which were not securities. On the tickets, by analogy with Soviet banknotes, there was a portrait of Mavrodi. He became the richest man in Russia, and his MMM accumulated a third of the country's cash. Everyone invested in MMM - janitors, workers, thieves in law and even KGB generals.

MMM has become a nationwide problem. Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin swore obscenely at the security forces, demanding “at least do something before everything explodes.” But they just shrugged their shoulders. And Mavrodi was already eager to launch the same pyramid in the USA, for which he bought a Cray Research Super Server 6400 supercomputer. In Russia, by August 1994, MMM had 15 million investors - more than the number of members of all parties combined. The businessman began to blackmail the government: he threatened to call a referendum on no confidence in the authorities. It got to the point that in the new year of 1994, instead of the president, he congratulated the country on the New Year.

The businessman’s personal life was also going well. At the TV competition “Morning Star”, where he was a member of the jury, Sergei liked the aspiring model Elena Pavlyuchenko. He invited her to a restaurant and, showering her with gifts, made her his mistress. Especially for Pavlyuchenko, Mavrodi organized a number of beauty contests, where she became the winner. They registered their marriage in 1993, but lived in different apartments. They met when Mavrodi himself wanted: living in the same apartment with a woman was not in his rules.

It is unlikely that MMM’s activities continued without the participation of high officials. And yet, on August 4, 1994, riot police, together with tax officials, stormed Mavrodi’s central office on Varshavskoe Highway. Several KAMAZ trucks of cash were taken out of the building, but according to the inventory, only 4 billion rubles were taken, which is more than 690 thousand dollars at the then exchange rate.

Two weeks later, investors came to the Government House and demanded the release of Mavrodi. After all, he promised to return everything! Having failed to achieve release, the initiative group nominated the swindler as a deputy. Soon people elected him to parliament, and parliamentary immunity gave him freedom. Having written a refusal of deputy salary, apartment and benefits,

Mavrodi never attended a State Duma meeting. A year later, he was stripped of his mandate, and the security forces resumed the criminal case. Sergei went underground and continued to do business, this time on the Internet. This time, the victims of the scammer were residents of the United States and Western Europe who played the Stock Generation (SG) virtual exchange.

The businessman was detained only in 2003. They say his wife handed him over to the security forces in exchange for a quiet life. Sergei did not blame her for anything and even filed for divorce so as not to burden her with claims from investors. He recognized the daughter that Elena gave birth to in 2006 as his own.

Only in 2006 did Mavrodi’s case come to trial. He was accused of fraud of $110 million, although experts said that MMM collected more than a billion dollars. The sentence is 4.5 years, which the convict served during the investigation phase. Journalists and investors met Sergei at the prison gates, but he ignored both of them.

Having been released, the tempter resumed his old ways: “MMM-2011”, “MMM-2012”, but the previous success did not happen. Then he turned his attention to Ukraine. Then there was Africa, where Mavrodi defrauded several million people. However, he never looked like a billionaire. It seemed that money interested him only as an opportunity to occupy his mind with numbers. Nobody knew where his huge fortune was.

On the night of March 26, 2018, 62-year-old Mavrodi sat down at a bus stop from unbearable chest pain. A passerby called an ambulance, but the doctors were unable to save the life of the great schemer. All that was left after him was his parents' old three-ruble coin, an aquarium and books. Sergei Panteleevich was buried in a closed coffin, using the money of former investors.

The greatest of the "swindlers" of our time, Sergei, in the Moscow Botkin Hospital. He was found at a bus stop on Polikarpov Street. The man complained of acute pain in his heart, was weak and could not move independently. He was taken to the hospital, but today, March 26, 2018, Mavrodi died. Korrespondent.net recalls the biography of the founder of MMM.

Biography of Sergei Mavrodi

Mavrodi was born in 1955 in Moscow. Mavrodi's parents were workers: his father was an assembler, his mother was an economist. Since birth, Sergei had a heart condition; doctors diagnosed a congenital bilateral defect.

Young Sergei had a truly phenomenal memory and played chess and poker well. He entered the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, but failed the entrance exams.

Sergei Mavrodi in his youth (photo: plusmillion.ru)

Failure at MIPT did not prevent Mavrodi from becoming a student at the Moscow State Institute of Electronics and Mathematics, Faculty of Applied Mathematics. After graduating from university, he worked at a closed research institute.

While studying at VYSE, Sergei Mavrodi developed an entrepreneurial spirit: he himself made and sold pirated copies of audio and video materials. Already in 1983, he was detained for selling illegal video recordings, but was released after 10 days without opening a criminal case.

Mavrodi and MMM

The MMM cooperative was founded by Sergei Mavrodi before perestroika, in 1989. Several more commercial organizations were created on the basis of the enterprise, among which the joint-stock company MMM, well-known in the post-Soviet space. Subsequently, about 15 million people suffered from the activities of this financial pyramid.

Mavrodi and his organization "MMM" (photo: eadaily.com)

In 1994, MMM shares could be freely purchased. The excitement among investors led to the fact that a third of the Russian budget was accumulated in the joint-stock company, and share prices increased almost 130 times. Already in August of the same year, Sergei Mavrodi was arrested for concealing taxes from Invest-Consulting, a company headed by Mavrodi himself. The schemer did not admit his guilt; on the contrary, he even regretted that he could not complete what he started. His company was declared bankrupt only in 1997.

In prison, Sergei Mavrodi decided to run for the State Duma of the Russian Federation, collected the necessary signatures and won the election. Accordingly, Mavrodi was released from prison.

Mavrodi in the courtroom (photo: PhotoXPress.ru)

Already in 2011, Mavrodi took up his old ways and organized MMM-2011, and then MMM-2012. But his brainchild fell apart. But in 2014, the financial pyramid “MMM-Global” was created, the goal of which was Africa, and later Asia. Somewhat later, they learned about MMM in the USA and Europe. Today it is estimated that investors in more than a hundred countries are interested in Mavrodi’s proposals.

Mavrodi and politics

Having become a deputy, Sergei Mavrodi refused the salary of a deputy, other benefits, and official transport. I never attended a meeting of the Duma, because I did not hide the fact that I became a deputy solely for the sake of immunity. Mavrodi threatened the authorities with a nationwide referendum, but things did not go beyond words. And in 1995 he was deprived of his deputy mandate ahead of schedule. In 1996, criminal proceedings were reopened against Mavrodi, and in 1997 he was put on the all-Russian wanted list, and then to Itnerpol.

In 2012 he created the party “Mi Mayemo Meta!” in Ukraine. I wanted to run for president of Russia in 2018.

Sergei Mavrodi and his wife (photo: fb.ru)

When everyone believed that Mavrodi was hiding abroad, he was in Russia. Until 2003, nothing was known about him. For 8 years, Sergei Mavrodi was helped to hide in Moscow by his personal security service, which was “no worse than the one that was looking for him.”

"Glory" Mavrodi

In 2000, information was announced in the press that there were about 400 “Sergeev Mavrodi” in psychiatric hospitals in Moscow. Mavrodi’s fame haunted the movie bosses, who released the film “Pyramid” in 2011. In 2014, another film about Mavrodi, “The River,” was released, but it was not widely released. In 2015, the series “Zombies” was broadcast on YouTube, where Sergei Mavrodi authored the script and soundtracks.

Mavrodi presents his book (photo: mirnov.ru)

Sergei Mavrodi wrote the book “Son of Lucifer”, 14 short stories from which were published in 2008, others in 2012. He wrote the books “Prison Diaries” and “The Punishment Cell” about his prison life.

According to studies, 75% of Russians consider Sergei Mavrodi a thief and schemer, about 15% - a genius.

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