Sergei Mavrodi

Sergei Panteleevich Mavrodi (Russian: Серге́й Пантеле́евич Мавро́ди; 11 August 1955 – 26 March 2018) was a Russian financial fraudster, financial criminal and previously a deputy of the State Duma. He was the founder of the МММ, a scheme that defrauded millions of people around the globe.

In 2007 Sergei Mavrodi was convicted in a Russian court of defrauding 10,000 investors out of 110 million rubles ($4.3 million). Mavrodi claimed he was not the beneficiary of the donations and that he was not used to a flamboyant lifestyle. The charge of which he was later convicted was tax fraud though he claimed that the MMM scheme was not a business, but instead a mutual donation program against which there is no law. There were interviews after his release where he claimed MMM Global was behind the bitcoin price rally.

Mavrodi was born in Moscow. His mother was Russian. His father was half Greek (therefore his surname is Mavrodi), half Ukrainian. During his childhood he was diagnosed with a bilateral heart defect. Mavrodi recalled that in school he was proficient in mathematics and physics. He studied at the Moscow State Institute of Electronics and Mathematics. In 1983 he was arrested for ten days due to illegal economic activity.

In 1998 Mavrodi created Stock Generation, allegedly a classic pyramid scheme presented as a "virtual stock market game". The website ran from 1998 to early 2000. It was based around trading non-existent companies' stocks in a form of the "stock exchange game" on the company's site, stockgeneration.com. Despite a bold-letter warning on the main page that the site was not a real stock exchange, between 20,000 and 275,000 people, according to various estimates, fell for the promised 200% returns and lost their money. According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), losses of victims were at least US$5.5 million. The Massachusetts district court initially found that U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was unable to cite Stock Generation's founders and owners for securities violations. However, the United States Court of Appeals reversed this decision in 2001, concluding that the SEC alleged sufficient facts to state a triable claim. In 2003 the SEC obtained permanent injunctions against SG Ltd. and relief defendants SG Perfect and SG Trading, which profited from the disbursement of funds fraudulently gained by SG Ltd.

Mavrodi died of heart problems at the age of 62 at a hospital in Moscow. The funeral was funded by the investors of МММ-2011.