Sergei Mavrodi

Sergey Panteleevich Mavrodi (Russian: Серге́й Пантелеевич Мавроди; born August 11, 1955) is a Russian criminal and a former deputy of the State Duma. He is the founder of the МММ series of pyramid schemes. In 2007 Sergei Mavrodi was convicted in a Russian court of defrauding 10,000 investors out of 110 million rubles ($4.3 million).Mavrodi claims 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 program of which there is no law against such. There were interviews after his release where he claimed MMM is behind the bitcoin price rally.

In 1989 he founded MMM.

He was then elected as deputy of State Duma obtaining parliamentary immunity. Mavrodi declared MMM bankrupt on December 22, 1997, then disappeared, and was on the run until his arrest in 2003.

In 1998 Mavrodi created , allegedly a classic pyramid scheme presented as a "virtual stock market game". The website ran from 1998 to early 2000. 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.

On April 28, 2007, a Moscow court sentenced him to four and a half years in a penal colony. The court also fined him 10,000 rubles ($390).

...
Wikipedia