Thursday 15 December 2016

'MMM Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox' - A cultic racket collapsing in Nigeria.



http://www.financialwatchngr.com/2016/12/13/nigerians-will-lose-millions-if-mmm-nigeria-collapses-sergey-mavrodi/

http://www.nation.co.ke/news/africa/Nigerian-savers-risk-losing-millions-in-troubled-pyramid-scheme/1066-3485094-13uwyus/

http://askbbcnews.com/breaking-widespread-panic-as-mmm-freezes-operations-in-nigeria/

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BREAKING: Widespread Panic As MMM Freezes Operations In Nigeria

Many Nigerians were thrown into panic in the morning of Tuesday, December 13, 2016, as the popular pyramid scheme, Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox, MMM, shares confusing message on its website stating that it has frozen all confirmed Mavros, otherwise known as money due for withdrawal for one month.
The operators of the scheme said in a message sent to all subscribers that the measure was put in place because “in the New Year season the system is experiencing heavy workload.”
This means, all the accounts of members who are due to be paid after having ‘provided help’ (PH) to another person since the last month have been frozen and hence, have no access to request for payment, known as ‘Get Help’ (GH) until after one month.
All members woke up with the shock message displayed on the screen as soon as they logged into their accounts. Giving reasons for freezing the Mavros, the scheme said it is experiencing heavy workload and want to deal with the attacks coming from the country’s mass media.
It also said it wants to prevent hitches in the coming new year hence, the freezing of the access to requesting for payments even when such person is due for payment. mmm freezing notice mmm freezing notice The message read thus.
One-Month Freezing of Confirmed Mavros
Dear members!
As usual, in the New Year season the System is experiencing heavy workload.
Moreover, it has to deal with the constant frenzy provoked by the authorities in the mass media.
The things are still going well; the participants feel calm; everyone gets paid – as you can see, there haven’t been any payment delays or other problems yet – but!.. it is better to avoid taking risk.:-)) (Moreover, there are almost three weeks left to the New Year.)
Hence, on the basis of the above mentioned, from now on all confirmed Mavro will be frozen for a month.
The reason for this measure is evident. We need to prevent any problems during the New Year season, and then, when everything calms down, this measure will be cancelled. (Which we will definitely do.)
script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js">
“We hope for your understanding, Administration
Panic quarters and Lamentations
In a Whatsapp group, MMM Nexus Solution, members of the ponzi scheme, many who are guilders, have launched their displeasure over the new development.
Many have lamented that they don’t know how to communicate the development to their downliners – those they persuaded to stake their money in the ponzi scheme.
They also argued that this decision of the scheme’s management will trigger the downfall of the scheme. They said most people will hence, be skeptical in staking their money while a good number of them said such decision is selfish and would have been better if it was conveyed to members before now.
One of the members with the name, Rosy, said, “This rule is obnoxious, unscrupulous, provocative, insensitive….they did not advise them well, evil prophecy coming to pass.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have, at several times, warned Nigerians against participating in the scheme while the house of representatives also ordered an investigation into the operation of the scheme, in October.
A Familar 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, 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.

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Sergey Panteleevich Mavrodi, a Russian convicted criminal and a former member of the State Duma. He is the founder of MMM series of pyramid schemes. PHOTO | WIKIPEDIA
Sergey Panteleevich Mavrodi, a Russian convicted criminal and a former member of the State Duma. Millions of Nigerians risk losing huge amounts of money they put in the Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox (MMM) scheme. 







By MOHAMMED MOMOH - Nation Correspondent in Abuja

 
ABUJA
Millions of Nigerians risk losing huge amounts of money they put in the Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox (MMM) scheme.
The Ponzi scheme is suspected to have crashed.
Barely 24 hours after its founder Sergey Mavrodi, wrote to the Nigeria government, criticising the latter’s constant attacks on the scheme, MMM deferred meeting its obligation to its clients.
The administrators of the scheme early Tuesday announced the freezing of the subscribers’ monies for one month.
Consequently, members of the Ponzi scheme who were due to withdraw both their capital and 30 per cent return on investment, will have to wait until sometime in January 2017.
EXPERIENCING HEAVY WORKLOAD
A statement posted on the MMM website said: “As usual, in the New Year season, the System is experiencing heavy workload.
“Moreover, it has to deal with the constant frenzy provoked by the authorities in the mass media.
“Hence, on the basis of the above mentioned, from now on, all confirmed Mavro will be frozen for a month.”
Mavro is the general name used to describe participants’ money in the system. The statement added: “The reason for this measure is evident. We need to prevent any problems during the New Year season, and then, when everything calms down, this measure will be cancelled. (Which we will definitely do.’’)
Daily Nation (copyright 2016)
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'MMM India,' another, unoriginal, contagious fantasy of Sergei Mavrodi.




About 15 years ago, I coined the common-sense phrase: 'premeditated, or dissimulated, closed-market swindle,' in order to deconstruct all Ponzi schemes, pyramid frauds, money circulation games, chain-letter scams, etc. However, although a few commentators have used my term (sometimes without attribution), a 'closed-market swindle' is not yet defined in law. That said, it is universally accepted that lying to, or withholding key-information from, people in order to take their money, is fraud which is a form of theft. Common-sense also reveals that, by 'passing any law, but failing to enforce it, has the effect of authorizing the very crime which you are trying to prohibit.' 


The lie which is fundamental to all 'closed-market swindles' is that people can earn income by contributing their own money to participate in any alleged 'profitable commercial opportunity' which is secretly an economically-unviable fake, due to the fact that the alleged 'profitable commercial opportunity' has been rigged so that it generates no significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving from its own participants. For more than 50 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to dissimulate closed-market swindles by offering endless-chains of victims various banal, but grossly-over-priced, products, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful payments, on the pretext that 'MLM' products and/or services, can then be regularly re-sold for a profit in significant quantities. However, since no gang of 'MLM' racketeers has ever proved that 'MLM' wampum has actually been regularly re-sold to the general public for profit in significant quantities,'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money.



In the final analysis, other than their ephemeral external presentations, internally there is no real difference between all closed-market swindles; for any alleged 'opportunity to make money,' wherein (when challenged, and/or rigorously investigated) the promoters are unable to provide independent quantifiable evidence to prove that their alleged 'viable commercial activity' has had any significant, and sustainable, source of revenue other than its own losing participants, is self-evidently a dissimulated closed-market swindle.



David Brear

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Sergei Panteleevich Mavrodi
(Сергей Пантелеевич Мавроди b.1955)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mavrodi

If you search for Sergei Mavrodi on Wikipedia, you will find him initially described as a Russian 'businessman and financier.' However, the only truthful part of this exciting comic-book story is the fact that he was born in Russia; for, in reality, he is (without a shadow of a doubt) a megalomaniacal psychopath .

 i.e. 

Sergei Panteleevich Mavrodi is suffering from a chronic mental disorder resulting in paranoid delusions of grandeur and self-righteousness, and the compulsion to pursue grandiose objectives.



Classically, Mavrodi believes himself not only to be a historically significant businessman and a financier, but also a morally, and intellectually, perfect Russian super hero who has been chosen to free humanity from the slavery of the evil world financial system. Indeed, if you watch the above video from 2011 (in which Mavrodi quite-openly admits that he is on a mission to destroy the pyramid scheme known as the world financial system and that his chosen weapon of mass-financial-destruction, is another, even more powerful, pyramid scheme), it beggars belief that he is not already locked up in a secure hospital.




In the aftermath of the unexpected fall of the Soviet regime (which left millions of ordinary Russians, particularly pensioners, facing destitution as the buying power of the once-protected rouble collapsed, and hyper-inflation took-hold) Mavrodi (an importer of office equipment) stepped-forward in the role of economic saviour and instigated what was soon to become one of the most-extensive closed-market swindles of all time, known as 'MMM.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme) . It has been estimated that between 1992 and 1994, 30 millions ill-informed Russians were deceived into giving a total of several billions US dollars to Mavrodi and his criminal associates, in the deluded belief that they were all going to receive a future reward of 1000% (to be paid annually). 

Typically, Mavrodi began to make the truth increasingly unthinkable, by using some of his ill-gotten gains to buy media advertising (including a series of humorous television commercials) as well as obtain public association with popular Russian sports, charities, celebrities and opinion-makers. 

In 1994, Mavrodi's offices were raided and he was arrested for tax evasion, but although millions of angry victims were left out of pocket, he avoided being held to account by getting himself elected to the Russian parliament. During his election campaign Mavrodi steadfastly pretended that the Russian government was trying to destroy 'MMM' in order to steal the company's money, and that 'MMM' investors would only be paid out if he could influence the government from inside the political system. However, no pay-out was forthcoming, and Mavrodi's immunity from prosecution was cancelled in 1995. 'MMM' was finally declared bankrupt in 1997. Mavrodi then went of the run until he was arrested in 2003. During this time, he spread a rumour that he'd gone to USA. In reality, he'd probably never actually left Russia. Indeed, it is now believed that Mavrodi had been hiding in Moscow, protected by a well-rewarded gang of former Soviet intelligence agents/thugs/racketeers who had access to a labyrinth of safe-apartments.

With the help of a relative, Mavrodi instigated another closed-market swindle in 1998, this time known as 'Stock Generation.' His new scam was nothing less than an Internet-based counterfeit stock market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Generation, but it was dissimulated as a 'lawful gambling game' and was targeted at greedy Americans and W. Europeans. Largely because of its deliberately-incomprehensible linguistic, and mathematical, presentation, the essentially-simple closed-market swindle known as 'Stock Generation,' initially duped a United States District Court in Massachusetts, but it was closed-down by the United States Court of Appeals, when common-sense was finally applied in 2000. Few of Mavrodi's estimated 20 000 and 275 000 victims, complained even though they lost a estimated total of at least US$5.5 millions.

Following his arrest in Russia in 2003, Mavrodi was initially sentenced to 13 months prison for holding a false passport.  He was subsequently convicted of fraud and tax evasion, and was released from a penal colony in 2007.





Since 2011, Mavrodi has been running a closed-market swindle known as 'MMM 2011' or 'MMM India,' in which countless victims have been deceived into buying effectively-valueless pieces of paper printed to resemble an authentic, valuable currency, the so-called 'Mavro.' 


There are even 'Mavro' coins.

Amazingly, Mavrodi openly-admits that 'MMM 2011/ India' is a pyramid scam. He is widely-quoted as saying : 'It is a naked scheme, nothing more ... People interact with each other and give each other money. For no reason!'However, since Mavrodi's 'MMM' organization has exhibited the universal identifying characteristics of a cult, his activities are neither original nor unique and, consequently, they cannot be fully-understood in isolation.


Erich Hermann Wilhelm Voegelin (1901-1985), was a gifted German academic, who, in the decade preceding WW II (working largely-alone), produced an insightful explanation of ‘Nazism’ as a form of perverted religion or cult. Sadly, during the 1930s, few people took much notice of Eric Voegelin. 

Whilst teaching political theory and sociology at the University of Vienna, he published two books, ‘The Race Idea in Intellectual History’ and ‘Race and the State’. In these, he pointed out the elementary, mistakes which invalidated various, popular ‘racial theories’. In 1938, Voegelin (aged 37) tried to publish 'The Political Religions'. In this, he focused on contemporary totalitarian ideologies derived from the ‘racial theories’ which he’d previously criticised as absurd pseudo-science. He now pointed out the glaring structural similarities of these ideologies to religions. Courageously, Voegelin was comparing medieval pseudo-sciences and 'Gnostic' cults to the 'Völkish or ‘Pan-German’ movement and its terrifying post-WW I incarnation, the 'Nazi party'.




In 1938, the ‘Nazi’ leader, Adolf Hitler, had held absolute power in Germany for almost 5 years. He had just taken control of Austria. The self-gratifying ‘Aryan Master Race’ delusion was spreading like a virus. In essence, Hitler controlled his fanatical core-adherents with a  comic-book story in which he was a morally and intellectually perfect Aryan super hero, the 'führer,' on a mission to save his 'noble race' from the slavery of the world financial and political system which was controlled by an 'evil secret society of sub-human Jews, Freemasons,' etc.



The dozens of books, essays and reviews which Eric Voegelin published during his lifetime, are almost impossible for the average person to take in.


Eric Voegelin

To give readers some idea of the scale of his thinking, Voegelin’s Major work, ‘Order and History’, began to be published in the USA in 1956 when he was aged 54, but it remained unfinished when he died 31 years later. In simple terms, Voegelin was as a philosopher-historian who took an elevated, and broad, view. He observed that, throughout human history, there have been periods of mass-alienation... following wars, revolutions, plagues, natural disasters, economic depressions, etc. ... during these periods, dangerous manipulators (acting like ancient, Gnostic Prophets by pretending moral and intellectual authority and offering some form of Utopian existence in the here and now) who at other times might be dismissed as absurd crackpots and charlatans, have found it much easier to become accepted as authentic Messiahs and to acquire a mass-following.




Thus, Voegelin, not only described, but also predicted the arrival of the latest generation of economic alchemists,like Sergei Panteleevich Mavrodi.


David Brear (copyright 2016)


http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/russian-riddle-113041200530_1.html


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