What If MMM Is A Fraud?

Joseph Osuji


Nigeria, one of the biggest countries in the globe with a population of over 188 million people living in it, is seen as the giant of Africa and in terms of its economy and human capacity.

With the fall in global oil price, the country which depends majorly on its crude exportation as a means of revenue generation has been hit with what economic analyst would liken to the economic recession that hit Greece few years back. 

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, another 1.5 million Nigerians became unemployed in the first quarter of 2016, and with unemployed rate tripling in the last few months and youth unemployment also rising to 42.24 percent, the country has witnessed a surge of about 15.2 million youth unemployment with a slow in productivity as recorded by in the GDP.

With such indices showing the level of poverty and unemployment in the country, Nigerians are now looking for palliative measure that can help generate income to cushion the effects of the present recession. With various online money making platforms coming into existence, many Nigerians are now quick to jump into offer as long as it promised bountiful reward without necessarily investigating the history or antecedence of such organization.

One of such online money making platform is the ponzi scheme known as MMM.

The question now is what is MMM, is it legally backed by the financial laws of your country, why has it gained much ground in the country, who are those behind the scheme and what is the government saying about the scheme?

According to Wikipedia, Ponzi scheme is an illegal investment scheme where the person or organization running it pays returns to existing investors from capital paid into it by new investors, rather than profit actually earned by the company itself.

MMM on the other hand according to the organizers of the scheme, is seen as a community where people help each other, providing a practical policy to connect millions of participants worldwide who need help and those who are ready to provide help for free. The scheme which is based on participant’s honesty and kindness, and promises investor 30% returns of their initial investment and with users receiving 10 percent from what the company refers to as all donations of the participants you invite or for posting positive testimonials.

The scheme, which started in Russia by Sergey Mayrodi, a Russian, in 1989, who was later convicted for financial scheming and sentenced with a jail term of four and a half years in April 2007, has gained much recognition in countries. The scheme which is based on participant’s honesty and kindness with no legal backings has gained tremendous ground in few countries like Russia, China, South Africa, Zimbabwe and currently Nigeria where a large population of participants have signed up with some pledging as much as a million naira in the scheme.

But recently, there was a strong warning by the Director of Federal Financial Monitoring Service (FFMS) in Russia warning China of a collapse of the scheme in the country and on December 25 investors in the MMM China woke up to discover that their accounts have been frozen and a statement on the site read thus: “investment cycles and interest payments would be calculated differently in the future, and all previous requests for withdrawals had been canceled” this lead to so many people losing their money to the scheme.

Few weeks later, the scheme came up with this statement to address the closure of the Republic of Bitcon, the brain child behind the MMM saying;

"Dear participants!

We regret to inform you that we have to close down the Republic of Bitcoin. It was an experiment, and, unfortunately, it failed. We turned out not to able to pay 100% per month. We can easily pay 30% per month (and we proved it in practice in many countries), but 100% is too much even for us.

That’s why the RB will be closed down.

All the participants’ RB-Mavro are transferred to the MMM-structure of the countries which the participants come from. If there is no MMM-structure working in this country, it will be created within two weeks from the date of this announcement.

All RB-Mavro will be demonstrated as "old" Mavro in PO. Any operations with them are impossible. Gradually, as your country will be developing, they will be paid back. 10% of the total input of the system will be spent on repaying “old” Mavro. This practice has already been tested in many countries and proved that it works. It usually takes a half a year to pay back old" Mavro.

This news is not very pleasant but there is nothing that can be done about it. It is not the end of the world. We just have to wait a bit.

We hope for understanding, Administration"

MMM has opened in more countries as promised, also members of the Republic of bitcoin are moved to their various countries MMM-structure while they wait for the repaying of their "old" Mavro as promised by MMM. According to MMM this could take up to 6 months.

With such breach of trust for a scheme that depends solely on honestly and trust of its participants, one would wonder if what happened to MMM China and the failed experimented Republic of Bitcoin would not one day happen in MMM Nigeria where caution have been thrown away by its participant even after the Nigerian financial regulatory body, the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) strong warnings on activities of wonder banks and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recent statement on the antecedence of the Ponzi scheme MMM:

“The attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nigeria (“SEC”) has been drawn to the activities of an online investment scheme tagged ‘MMM Federal Republic of Nigeria (nigeria.mmm.net). The platform has embarked on an aggressive online media campaign to lure the investing public to participate in what it called “mutual aid financial network” with a monthly investment return of 30%”

“The Commission hereby notifies the investing public that the operation of this investment scheme has no tangible business model hence it’s a PONZI SCHEME where returns are paid from other people’s invested sum. Also, its operation is not registered by the Commission”.

“The general public is hereby advised to distance themselves from this online scheme. Please note that anyone that subscribe to this illegal activity does so at his/her own risk” Ponzi schemes one still wonders why people are still trooping to sign up with such scheme.  

With these warnings and recent happenings in China and Zimbabwe where the scheme has failed, one still wonders why millions of Nigerians still troop to sign up with the scheme.

The answer, which is not farfetched, is as a result of participant of the scheme promoting MMM through their numerous testimonies how the scheme has enriched their life and helped to turn their fortunes around positively through testimonies on almost all social media platform and even going as far as creating communities in various geographical areas on Facebook with names like MMM Ikeja, MMM Nigeria Community. While some are actively interested in the scheme, some investors due to recent stories about the scheme have started pulling out their money. An investor who spoke to Insidemainland on phone said “in this period of recession, I cannot wait for my money to have stories or issues, because with the way the scheme is going and what I have been hearing, I don’t think it will last for a long time.”

For those already signed up for MMM scheme and those who are been convinced to sign up with the ponzi scheme, the question should be, would I be willing to part with my money in this present economic crisis with a scheme with no legal backing, that depends on solely of participants trust and honesty?

What if Nigerians wake up and the site is no longer there as we have seen in many wonder banks going into oblivion without a trace. These questions I think should be able to guide participants of MMM scheme who have so much invested in it.

Investors of MMM should take a clue to what happened in China and Zimbabwe recently so as to avoid facing a much painful recession of their hard earned money to schemes that are not legally backed by laws governing financial institutions in their countries.