MMM founder, Sergei Mavrodi dies of heart attack in Russia

The founder of the popular ponzi scheme, MMM, Sergey Mavrodi has reportedly died of heart attach in Moscow, Russia.

Report has it that the 62 yr-old Mavrodi was taken to a city hospital from a bus stop overnight Monday, March 26, after he felt weakness and pain in the chest area.

“The emergency team has failed to save his life. He died this morning,” the report said.

Mavrodi's MMM financial pyramid was a typical Ponzi scheme in which earlier investors receive their profits from subsequent investors. Mavrodi promised returns of 20 percent to 75 percent a month, as well as lotteries and bonuses for investors.

As soon as the number of new clients stopped growing, the pyramid collapsed, causing huge financial losses for at least 10 million people, in some cases leaving them destitute.

Sergei Mavrodi created the company “MMM” in 1992. It quickly gained popularity and became the largest financial pyramid in the history of Russia.

In 1994, Mavrodi became a member of the Russian parliament. Then he announced that he was giving up his privileges: salaries and cars. Mavrodi stressed that he became a deputy only for the sake of immunity.

Two years later, before the presidential elections in 1996, he was stripped of his mandate.

In 2007, Mavrodi was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for defrauding 10,000 investors out of 110 million rubles ($4.3 million). All this time, he left during the preliminary detention while the investigation was conducted.

Mavrodi claimed he is not the beneficiary of the donations and he is not used to flamboyant lifestyle.

His true charges of which he was later convicted of is tax fraud though he claimed that MMM scheme is not a business, but a mutual donation programme of which there is no law against such.

In 2011, Mavrodi launched another pyramid scheme called MMM-2011, calling on investors to purchase so-called Mavro currency units in a bid to get rid of the "unfair" financial system. Some 15 months later, Mavrodi halted the project.

From 2011-16, Mavrodi launched Ponzi schemes under the MMM brand in India, China, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria.

In many of those countries, Mavrodi's operations were subsequently shut down or suspended.