Russia’s top lender, Sberbank, has warned its clients not to use their accounts for “dubious financial schemes” offered by the MMM pyramid mastermind Sergei Mavrodi, the bank said on Friday.
A manual for new participants in the MMM-2012 project website says a person should buy a credit card in Sberbank, link to an account management service via a mobile phone, top up the balance of the credit card and send the account information to a special ‘MMM accountant to start earning revenues.
“The bank drew to its customers’ attention that MMM participants distribute flyers using the bank’s name in them, use Sberbank clients’ accounts to pay off other participants in MMM-2011 and MMM-2012, and promise to recover deposits for Sberbank USSR’s clients,” Sberbank said in a statement.
The bank told Prime news agency it did not have any connections to the MMM ponzi schemes.
“Sberbank is constantly monitoring the emergence of dubious financial schemes in which Sberbank clients may be involved. The bank encourages citizens to be vigilant and not to make investments in which [the clients] could lose their money,” the bank said.
The Russian authorities estimate MMM’s scams have in the past attracted between two and five million investors, including a number of high-profile celebrities, who lost around $1.5 billion when the pyramid’s first incarnation collapsed in 1994. A previous Mavrodi-owned MMM import company and MMM bank were investigated by the tax authorities in 1992, after the bank went bust.
The collapse of Mavrodi’s 1990s MMM pyramid scheme cost millions of Russians their life savings. Mavrodi subsequently became a fugitive, before serving out a four-and-a-half year prison term in the mid 2000s.