South African MMM Global chapter collapses
Well, that didn’t take long.
Just shy of a month after MMM Global collapsed, the local South African chapter has gone under.
As at the time of publication invested funds, along with withdrawal requests, have been “frozen”.
Not surprisingly, the reason for the freeze is a lack of new investment into the scheme.
The South African arm of MMM Global Republic of Bitcoin has frozen its members’ money – but is urging them to deposit new funds and recruit more members to “restart” the system.
Existing investors are seemingly only half-able to grasp the mechanics of a Ponzi scheme.
Posts on the organisation’s Facebook page blame media attention in the scheme that caused fewer people to join up or contribute to it, creating an “imbalance” that made it impossible to pay members out.
It is true that no new investment in a Ponzi scheme will cause it to collapse. However what “media attention” was directed at MMM Global pertained to its own collapse, due to withdrawals exceeding the rate of new investment.
But hey, why let reality get in the way of Facebook rants.
The “solution” MMM South Africa have come up with is to relaunch the scheme with “New Mavros”.
It’s basically the same thing, only 10% of newly invested funds will be used to pay off existing MMM South Africa investors who have had funds frozen.
And that’s on top of the 10% MMM South Africa was already diverting to investors who lost money in MMM Global’s collapse.
Ponzi-ception anyone?
According to information from the Facebook page, new deposits will be frozen for 14 days, after which members will be able to request withdrawals from the system.
I predicted the collapse of local MMM Global local chapters after the main scheme went bust. My prediction here is MMM South Africa aren’t going to receive anywhere near the amount they need to restart the scheme over the next fortnight.
New investment is basically dead, so their demographic is existing investors. Most of which aren’t going to be willing to deposit more given they believe they’re already owed so much (even if most of it is just pie-in-the-sky monopoly money that doesn’t exist).
MMM members have voiced their concern on social media, with one claiming he is set to lose R30 000.
Facebook user BM Abinet said the last time he checked he had 35 798 mavros (which is equivalent to the rand currency), “but now the system says my old mavros is 5 798, so where’s my R30 000?”
In a somewhat hilarious turn of events, around the same time MMM South Africa collapsed last week, an investor ‘filed an application in the North Gauteng High Court against the commissioner of the National Consumer Commission (NCC)‘.
The investor who filed the application, Deon Janse van Rensburg,
wants the court to declare that the MMM format is legitimate and does not have the characteristics of a Ponzi, pyramid, multiplication or chain-letter scheme.
What with MMM South Africa collapsing due to a lack of newly invested funds, best of luck with the lawsuit fellas.
Sergey Mavrodi, owner of MMM Global and MMM South Africa, remains in hiding.
Enjoying the millions he stole from investors, Mavrodi is believed to be sitting on a beach somewhere laughing it up.
As much as I pity the suckers in these Ponzi schemes, I find it hard to sympathize with the people who “invested” in South Africa, China, the Philippines or anywhere else when a simple Google serge of the man who publicly attached his name as the owner had a clear history of running Ponzi schemes going back as far as Russia in the mid 90s.
Sergey Mavrodi is one of the most well-documented con artists in the world.
Of course, don’t try telling that to the people who have been throwing money at Charles Scoville and Faith Sloan lately …
SD
Oh and remember guys, despite MMM Global being totally not decentralized and not shut downable by anybody, Mavrodi still managed to um… shut it down and freeze everyone’s balance.
But um yeah, MMM Global is still totally not able to be shut down by anyone. And it’s totally not a Ponzi scheme either.
Not on the beach, Mavrodi still publishes youtube videos from the same noisy moscow apartment he used to.
Last dated may 1 and he talks of current events: youtube.com/user/SergeyMavrodiSu/videos
He seems happy enough with his millions.
“New project from the creator of MMM GLOBAL – E-DINAR” – uploaded a week ago.
Didn’t know Mavrodi was behind the E-Dinar Ponzi crap…
Edinar is probably not his. that is a pimp chanel.
Also Mavrodi never left Russian territory in the past, never applied for a travel passport , even been in hiding in an apartment with no exiting for years in 90-ies.
Most of his life he was living as a hermit monk, even while in jail he demanded to do his time in the solitary confinement.
Also I do not belive he made anything on MMM-201+.
He is a classic case of a crazy nut. After his realease from jail he was hanging out on the poetry forums and sharing his poems till he met Alexander Kolbasov there, who offered to launch a new pyramid.
Mavrodi refused the idea for long time till he gave up and demanded that the new ponzi will have to be honest, every participant must know it is ponzi, thats how MMM-2011 was born.
Note: money never went to him or his accounts, it is peer to peer, the only way he can earn on it is to make multiple fake participants and asking other participants to send money to those.
He could not have done it by himself without help of multiple high level participants, with most he had disputes later on and they would speak up if had such information.
There were also some money collected with compensation fund, but those were going to regional managers.
Knowing him personaly, yes, he is crazy idiot and does not do it for the money, his idea was to crash a US dollar which he claimed no way better than his fake mavros.
Other possibilities, his ex wife and daughter are living in Mexico (left in 90ies). His Brother is nowhere to be found, His niece is also wanted for decades – They could somehow assist him to hide the money, but for a person such as Mavrodi to cross borders or do financial transactions is almost impossible.
E-Dinar is in fact Kolbasov’s ponzi, yep, it would be correct calling it “from the creator of MMM ”
(one of them)
Here is Kolbasov himself with E-Dinar: youtube.com/watch?v=GR5vQtqgNK8
Thanks for the backstory NikSam.
Sounds like a biography would make for an interesting read. It might explain how Mavrodi got to this point.
You don’t just wake up one day with Einstein hair and decide Ponzi schemes are the only way to take down the global economy.
Heh, I published a book about his MMM-1993-4 in Russia, now there might be a new book, but things are getting interesting so the final chapters are still not finished in the real life 🙂