MLM in Nigeria is a bit of a mess at the moment. The MLM underbelly has completely taken over and scamming is rampant.

On any given day of late BehindMLM’s filters are nuking spammy comments pushing the latest scam sweeping Nigeria. Sure enough the next day though there’s a new set of budding Nigerian marketers who think dropping their referral links anywhere and everywhere is a path to riches.

A declining economy, distrust of the government, hoards of gullible idiots and seasoned scammers who see them as easy pickings, has created the perfect storm of financial chaos over the last few months.

So much so has the situation gotten completely out of hand, that emboldened scammers are purportedly now directly trolling the Nigerian government.

Sergey Mavrodi is directly responsible for an untold number of victims losing an equally untold sum of money. We’re probably talking hundreds of millions of dollars here all up.

Mavrodi’s modus operandi sees him launch variation after variation of his MMM Global scheme. Through said schemes, Mavrodi’s managed to convince a large number of people that giving him all their money somehow helps them.

The schemes eventually go bust, after which Mavrodi concentrates his efforts on more fertile grounds.

At the moment that’s Nigeria, following the collapse of MMM Global scams in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

The MMM Global Nigeria chapter purportedly has an affiliate base of three million. That’s a nice cash cow for Mavrodi, who sits at the top of MMM Global’s various local incarnations.

Seeking to protect what is likely to currently be his largest source of income, news reports out of Nigeria claim Mavrodi personally wrote to the Nigerian government.

Why?

To plead the case for Ponzi schemes of course.

Whether Mavrodi actually sent a letter to the Nigerian government is unclear. Reports are based on an “open letter to the Nigerian authorities” that recently appeared in affiliate backoffices.

Mavrodi writes;

Honorable authorities, So far MMM has come under a constant attack from you. In this regard, I would like to ask you a few simple questions. Since you are concerned with the interests of millions of your fellow citizens, I hope that you would be so kind to answer them.

What are you trying to get? Do you want the MMM System to collapse and millions of people to suffer?

Who will support them then if now MMM is their only means of livelihood? Will you? You even don’t pay wages to people?

Or might you not care about them? Might you be using a trendy topic to make a good name for yourselves?

What will you say to a mother who will have no money to buy food for her child? Will you let her child die for the sake of the higher interests of the economy?

Uh… what?

First off it’s important to note that MMM Global collapsed under its own weight, as all Ponzi schemes do.

MMM South Africa and MMM Zimbabwe collapsed for the same reason.

If left unregulated, MMM Nigeria will also eventually collapse, leaving most of the three million investors with a loss.

Simple mathematics dictates that a perpetual 100% a month ROI is going to reward initial investors for as long as it pays out and shaft everybody else.

You say that MMM is a scam.

What is the scam here, if all members are warned in advance about all the risks, the possible and impossible ones?

They know there are no investments at all. The warning is a red text on a yellow background placed on most prominent place of the website.

If I tell someone I’m about to murder them and follow through, that doesn’t make it any less of a crime.

Similarly, informing people you’re stealing from them also doesn’t make it any less of a crime.

And nowhere has Mavrodi ever been brutally honest about the Ponzi nature of his MMM Global scams.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a disclaimer acknowledging the Ponzi business model and warning people they’re practically guaranteed to lose money by investing on any MMM Global site.

Infact Mavrodi and his cohorts go out of their way to mask the fraud, by dressing it up in warm and cuddly “provide help, get help” rhetoric. That’s calculated fraud and is anything but acknowledging the risks of Ponzi investment.

You say that MMM is bad. Why? Yes, it produces nothing, but nothing gets out of the country either.

The money is just redistributed among the citizens of Nigeria. It gets from those who are richer to poorer ones, in this way restoring social justice. What”s wrong with that?

Most of the money deposited in MMM Global scams funnels up to Mavrodi in friends. They systematically shift money out of the scheme via direct deposits through bitcoin.

The claim that money is paid in by locals and redistributed to locals is a myth. Some top investors make a bit of money but by and large MMM Global is little more a global ATM for Mavrodi.

You have repeatedly stated that “it should be investigated!.. researched!..”

It means you know nothing about this System yet; you even haven’t understood how it works……… And finally.

If you know what is right for people, why is the life so bad in the country? Sincerely yours, Sergey Mavrodi.

How MMM Global works is simple. You deposit money and then steal money from people who join after you.

And the quality of life for Nigerians is a red herring. Nothing justifies financial fraud.

P.S. As for your statement that “everything will collapse soon”.

The system has been working in Nigeria for a year, and according to your estimates, the total number of members now is about 3 million people. In Nigeria the population is approximately 195 million. Can you calculate? Will it be “soon”? :-))

Mavrodi’s postscript is perhaps the most trolly part of the whole letter.

MMM Global collapsed right on the two-year mark. MMM Global’s other African chapters didn’t last anywhere near that.

MMM Nigeria will likely fall somewhere in between.

If Nigerian authorities shut the scam down tomorrow (by arresting top leaders), most of the estimated three million Nigerian investors will lose money.

If authorities do nothing and MMM Nigeria collapses, the only difference is Mavrodi will steal more money and far more than 3 million investors will lose money.

But under the ruse of helping Nigerians and offering an alternative economy, that’s exactly what Mavrodi is banking on.