The ‘Russian-made’ Ponzi scheme called MMM Nigeria has become not only popular in the West African 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, The Independent, which wrote that the Mavrodi Mondial Moneybox (MMM) is spreading like wildfire in Africa despite failing in Zimbabwe.
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 the founder of the scheme, Sergey Mavrodi went on the run after the scheme first failed in Europe in the late 1990s, causing participants to lose around $100million and also went on the run again, earlier this year (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 shut 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.
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 participants in the scheme.
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.”