The ‘Russian-made’ Ponzi scheme called MMM Nigeria has become not only
popular in the West Africa country but also across the ocean as the
international media has beamed its searchlight on what is now regarded
as Nigeria’s biggest money-double scheme ever.
From their reports, the international media present a very bleak view of
what the future holds for MMM Nigeria and other Ponzi schemes.
First to do a report on MMM Nigeria and others is respected British news
daily Independent, which wrote that the Mavrodi Mondial Moneybox (MMM)
is spreading like wildfire in Africa despite failing in Zimbabwe.
Independent UK takes a look at MMM Nigeria and others
It reported that MMM Nigeria continued to claim it was a legal entity
even though the Central Bank of Nigeria declared it as not being so.
It noted also that founder of the scheme Sergey Mavrodi went on the run
after the scheme first failed in Europe in the late 1990s, causing
particip@nts to lose around $100million and also went on the run again,
earlier this (April precisely) after another scheme of his, Republic of
Bitcoin, failed.
It wrapped up its report with the revelation that South African banks
had, as at when the report was written in September, already shutting
down accounts linked to the MMM scheme.
For CNN which wrote its own report after the freezing of MMM scheme on
Tuesday, December 13, the bone of contention was the ‘meteoric rise of
the MMM Nigeria’ and how it all went to hell.
CNN says a host of factors helped the rise of MMM Nigeria which led to over 3 million people joining the scheme
It noted that the scheme was actually launched in Nigeria in November
2015 but became very popular in 2016. It noted further that despite
government warnings against the scheme,
Nigerians went ahead to keep putting their funds into the Ponzi scheme.
Unemployment also played a part in the rise of MMM as fresh graduates
and the unemployed turned to the scheme to ‘keep body and soul
together’. It noted also that some religious leaders also helped to
confer legitimacy on MMM Nigeria by allowing it to be preached from the
pulpit by some members who are particip@nts in the scheme.
The BBC predicts a dark future for MMM Nigeria even after January 2017
In the BBC’s report, the theme is all about the big question ‘Will money
frozen in the scheme ever be returned?’ It noted that Mavrodi was
jailed for four years in Russia after the scheme lost families savings
of up to $100million. He was released in 2007 and not long after started
to present the scheme in Africa.
It reports that while it is unclear if people will ever get back their
invested money which has been frozen in the scheme, BBC noted that for
sure,
many people will lose their funds.
It ended its report with the doomsday prediction that “Even if MMM
reopens in January as it claims, it is likely that the scheme would
collapse at some point