Biography of Sergei Mavrodi
Sergei Panteleevich Mavrodi is the founder of the MMM structure, which has become a legend and a brand, a former State Duma deputy, the author of literary works, some of which were written during his stay in prison, and a singer.
Mavrodi Sergey Panteleevich
According to sociologists, three-quarters of Russian citizens are convinced that in reality he is just a swindler and a swindler, but every tenth compatriot assessed his personality positively, calling him an innovator, the creator of progressive ideas and an ingenious way of making money.
The notorious entrepreneur himself believes that only the scale of his actions is important, regardless of their results, in which some may see the positive, and others – the negative.
Childhood and family
The future creator of the controversial financial system was born on August 11, 1955 in the capital of our homeland. His father, Panteley Andreevich, was from Donbass, worked as an assembly worker, and had Greek and Ukrainian roots (the surname translated from Greek means “black” or “dark”). Mom, Valentina Fedorovna, before Monakhov’s marriage, was an engineer-economist by profession, and Russian by nationality. She was born in the Vladimir region.
The Mavrodi brothers in their school years
The married couple raised two sons. Sergei was the first-born, the youngest child was named Vyacheslav. Parents passed away in the 1980s from cancer. Doctors diagnosed the eldest of the brothers with a double heart defect at birth and suggested that he might not even live to adulthood. However, their forecast did not come true.
At school, Seryozha studied well, participated in olympiads in mathematics and physics, and had a phenomenal memory - he could easily repeat a text read aloud to him. But later, after suffering twelve concussions, he lost this ability. Sergei Mavrodi also attended art school as a child, although, according to him, he did not like to draw.
Mavrodi in mental hospitals and cinema
According to psychiatrists, in Moscow and the region alone, as of mid-2000, there were almost four hundred “Sergei Mavrodi” registered in hospitals—many more “doubles” than anyone else. For example, there were only about fifty “Yeltsins” at that time. In 1994, on one of the channels, Sergei Mavrodi congratulated Russians on the New Year.
On April 7, 2011, the feature film “Pyrammida”, based on Mavrodi’s story of the same name, was released in wide release. (Distributor film company Universal Pictures International.) The role of Sergei Mavrodi (in the film he is Sergei Mamontov) was played by Alexey Serebryakov.
In the summer of 2012, based on Mavrodi’s script, filming of the film “The River” began. The film premiered as part of the third Russian international horror film award “The Drop” in 2014. The film was awarded a special award for “domestic contribution to the development of the genre. The film was not released in wide release for unknown reasons. The film “The River” and the script were published on a website dedicated to his work.
The soundtrack to the film “The River” was provided by the Yekaterinburg rock band “GestalT”. According to a 2014 VTsIOM survey, about 17% of Russians considered Sergei Mavrodi a financial genius and an effective entrepreneur. At the same time, 74% called Mavrodi a swindler and a swindler.
On December 7, 2015, the series “Zombies” was launched on YouTube, where Sergei Mavrodi authored the script and soundtracks. In six months, the series received almost 105 million views (from 3 to 9 million views per episode). In September 2021, the second season of the Zombie series, entitled “Devil,” was released on YouTube. By this time, Sergei Mavrodi’s channel was ranked second among non-profit channels in the ranking of the SocialBlade website according to the “SB Score” criterion.
In November 2021, Sergey Mavrodi moved the series to Vimeo hosting. The new series, published on this site, collected more than 37 million views in a few days.
In March 2021, the premiere of the series “Antiworld” took place: “Now, due to the fact that MMM does not work in Russia, I am falling out of the media space. But for some of my reasons, I need to stay there. That's why I started the series."
Education
In 1972, after graduating, he tried to enter the famous Physics and Technology Institute, where scientists and specialists of the highest level are trained. The young man expected to pass physics with an “excellent” grade, but received a satisfactory grade for his written work, so he took the documents and was enrolled in a somewhat less prestigious technical university - electronic engineering, whose graduates also included many famous people, for example, ex-director of the FSB Nikolai Kovalev and ex-wife of Evgeniy Kaspersky Natalya.
Sergei Mavrodi in his youth
As a student at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics, Sergei did not show much zeal for acquiring knowledge - he attended lectures and seminars extremely rarely. Although in his first year he nevertheless became the winner of the institute Olympiad, which in itself speaks of his outstanding physico-mathematical abilities.
During his student years, the young man was fond of playing preference, sambo, and practiced blacksmithing.
After graduating from the institute in 1978, the young engineer worked for 3 years as an assigned worker at one of the capital’s research institutes. Then he quit, got a job as a subway watchman and started selling pirated videos. As a result, in 1983 he was detained by law enforcement agencies for illegal business. He could have ended up behind bars, but he managed to avoid serious punishment, since in those years law enforcement agencies were working against “going too far” in relation to minor offenses.
Sergey Mavrodi and MMM
In 1989, the young man, in partnership with his brother Vyacheslav and his wife Olga Melnikova, founded (the abbreviation was formed from the names of the founders of the company). On its basis, several structures were later created, including the notorious financial pyramid of the same name with fifteen million investors.
Sergey Mavrodi - creator of MMM
The sale of the company's shares started in February 1994, and in just 6 months there was a more than hundredfold increase in the value of securities, and capital accumulation reached one third of the state budget. Until April 4, 1994, the value of each share increased 127 times, and the number of investors, according to various estimates, reached from 10 to 15 million Russians.
The rapid activity of the domestic phenomenon was stopped by arrest for violating tax laws. Mavrodi himself claimed that the authorities had launched a large-scale investigation and that the whole case was fabricated from beginning to end. However, straight from prison, he suspended the work of his main brainchild and decided to run for parliament. After about 2 months he was released, and at the end of October he became a parliamentarian.
Mavrodi and the DPR
On August 3, 2012, Sergei Mavrodi announced the creation of the political party “MMM” (“Mi Maemo Metu”) in Ukraine, which nominated Denis Pushilin as a candidate for deputy in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada in the 94th constituency of the Kyiv region.
On October 16, 2012, Sergei Mavrodi announced in an interview about the mass registration of MMM members as voters in the elections to the Opposition Coordination Council and plans to “get the entire council.” Sergei Mavrodi announced his participation in the 2018 Russian presidential elections: “I will run. Without any doubt! I want to help my Fatherland, and I know how to do it. This means that this is my direct civic duty.”
Political career
Having become a parliamentarian in 1994, Sergei Panteleevich ignored legislative activity and did not attend Duma meetings. He was not interested in politics, and he needed the status of a deputy solely for the privilege of immunity. Sergei Mavrodi congratulates on the New Year 1994. At the same time, he behaved with dignity - he officially renounced his due salary and exclusive parliamentary rights in the form of a dacha, an apartment, and a company car. He continued to engage in commercial activities, and also created and led the People's Capital Party.
Mavrodi in the State Duma (1995)
In 1995, at the proposal of the Credentials Commission, he was deprived of his powers as a people's deputy. In December, he re-nominated his candidacy for the State Duma of the 2nd convocation, but failed. In 1996, the ex-deputy was nominated for president of the Russian Federation, but the Central Election Commission refused to register his candidacy, doubting the authenticity of the signatures in his support. The criminal proceedings initiated in this regard were soon terminated due to lack of evidence, but the proceedings prevented him from taking part in the elections.
Political activity
On August 4, 1994, Sergei Mavrodi was arrested on charges of concealing income from the company he headed. While in prison, he registered as a candidate for parliament. In September, he was nominated as a candidate for the State Duma in by-elections in the Mytishchi district of Moscow, after which he was released.
On October 30, 1994, Mavrodi was elected as a deputy of the Russian parliament. Having become a deputy, Sergei Mavrodi wrote an official statement renouncing his deputy salary and all deputy privileges: benefits, a dacha, an official car. Sergei Panteleevich never hid the fact that he was running for deputy solely for the sake of parliamentary immunity. Since his election as a deputy of the State Duma, Mavrodi has not attended a single meeting.
At the very beginning of the conflict with the authorities, Mavrodi officially, through the press, threatened them with a nationwide referendum, raising the question of no confidence in the authorities. Sergei Mavrodi promised to collect the required million signatures from 10 million investors in a week. Subsequently, he was repeatedly invited to the Kremlin “for negotiations,” but consistently ignored all such invitations.
A year later, on October 6, 1995, State Duma deputies terminated his parliamentary powers ahead of schedule. In 1995, he again ran for the Duma from the People's Capital Party, but lost the election.
Litigation
In 1997, MMM was declared bankrupt. The deprivation of immunity of the parliamentarian led to the resumption of previous investigative actions against the “father” of MMM, as part of a new charge of fraud. In 1997, Mavrodi was put on the wanted list in Russia, and since 1998 Interpol has been looking for him.
This is what MMM tickets looked like
According to law enforcement agencies, he was hiding in the Moscow region or abroad. In reality, the leader of an unprecedented financial community did not leave the capital anywhere, but lived incognito in a rented apartment for about 8 years. His safety was allegedly ensured by a personal service of specialists of a level no lower than international police officers.
Sergei Mavrodi has been wanted for 6 years
During his time on the wanted list, the irrepressible pyramid builder launched another project on the World Wide Web - the largest electronic exchange in history, Stock Generation. About three hundred thousand Europeans and Americans suffered from its activities.
In 2003, an adventurer of colossal proportions was arrested. He was accused of forgery (at the time of his arrest, law enforcement seized a false passport from him), as well as violating tax laws, in addition to an existing indictment for fraud. For the first crime, the court sentenced him to imprisonment for 1 year and 1 month. There was no punishment for the second due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.
Photo from the courtroom (2003)
The main case of defrauding millions of investors contained more than 600 volumes. It was investigated for 3 years, and the trial continued for another year. The amount of damage caused to victims has been assessed differently by individual experts, but is generally accepted to have amounted to more than a billion dollars.
Mavrodi was released in 2007
In 2007, the fraudster received a court sentence of 4.5 years in prison. About a month later he was released - his stay in the pre-trial detention center was counted towards his sentence.
Sergei Mavrodi wrote the book “Temptation”
A year after his release, he published the book “Temptation.” Bailiffs seized its circulation, as the author was sued by defrauded investors for the recovery of funds in the amount of about three hundred million rubles. To pay off the debt, more than one and a half thousand books were also confiscated from his private library.
Origin
Sergei Mavrodi was born in Moscow on August 11, 1955. He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (now a division of the National Research University Higher School of Economics) and in 1989 registered the MMM cooperative. Mavrodi’s enterprise was engaged in very different activities: from importing office equipment to organizing beauty contests.
In 1992, Sergei registered an open joint-stock company (OJSC) “MMM”, and in 1994 he began selling shares of his enterprise. The Ministry of Finance did not give the businessman permission to further issue shares. Then Mavrodi came up with “MMM tickets” - pieces of paper similar to Soviet chervonets, which supposedly gave a person the right to own a tenth of the company’s shares. But in fact, the tickets were not securities.
Initially, tickets cost a thousand rubles, but due to the hype around MMM, their price jumped to 127 thousand in 1994. Mavrodi himself set quotes and sometimes bought tickets from investors, but mostly they transferred tickets to each other.
In July 1994, the authorities turned their attention to Mavrodi's company, fearing possible bankruptcy. Then Sergei reduced the price of his company’s shares to the original thousand rubles - people lost huge amounts of money, about 50 people committed suicide.
In August 1994, Mavrodi was accused of tax evasion, and his apartment was stormed by soldiers. But Sergei announced that he was running for the State Duma from the Mytishchi district. Mavrodi won the elections, became a deputy and enjoyed immunity.
In 1997, Mavrodi was put on the international wanted list, but could not be found. Until 2003, he lived as a recluse in an apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment in Moscow. Sergei was tried for tax evasion, and he was also found to have a fake passport.
In 2004, a case of fraud was opened against Mavrodi, the verdict was announced only three years later - Sergei was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison. But by that time he had already served his entire sentence - from the moment of his arrest, Mavrodi was in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center.
After his release, Mavrodi began actively writing books about his life, and in 2011 he announced the revival of MMM. In 2014, he decided to make money on the topic of cryptocurrencies and announced the creation of the MMM Global Republic of Bitcoin. Two years later the project was closed. In the last years of his life, Sergei was engaged in video blogging and made little-known Internet series “Zombie” and “Antiworld”.
On March 26, it became known about the death of Sergei Mavrodi; he was 62 years old. The day before, Mavrodi clutched his heart at a bus stop, an ambulance was called and he was taken to the hospital, where Sergei died.
Life after prison
In 2011, on the MNK channel, Sergei read chapters from his literary works, including the unpublished Antiworld, and commented on news articles, but later abandoned this activity.
During the same period, the film “PiraMMMida”, based on his story of the same name, was released. The main roles in the film were played by Alexey Serebryakov, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Pyotr Fedorov and Ekaterina Vilkova. Sergei Mavrodi's song about Russia In 2011, the leader of the MMM system announced its revival, but a year later this pyramid also collapsed. But in subsequent years, he made more than one attempt to build financial pyramids, which, according to him, were more advanced and reliable. The principle of operation of MMM-2011 Sergei also had an official source of income in the amount of 15 thousand rubles monthly - he advised the accounting department of entrepreneur Pavel Molchanov from Noginsk. Half of his salary was confiscated by bailiffs. He could not pay all of the available three hundred fines, as a result of which in 2012 Mavrodi was arrested for 5 days. At the beginning of 2014, Mavrodi launched a virtual pyramid based on the cryptocurrency - bitcoins - with a payback of 100%. In December 2015, he announced the cessation of MMM activities in Russia, as well as Kazakhstan and Belarus, declaring local pyramid schemes fraudulent. In the spring of 2021, he also announced the closure of the virtual pyramid.
Sergei Mavrodi in 2010
In 2014, the film “The River” was filmed based on his script. In 2015, the TV series “Zombies” began airing on the Internet, where he became not only the author of the script, but also the soundtrack. The series “Zombie” by Sergei Mavrodi with his songs
Books and television projects
“Son of Lucifer” (2008)
The novel, written by Sergei in prison, consists of separate short stories. Every day reveals its own story, has its own hero and a new line of human destiny. And there are about 150 such descriptions, most of which were unpublished.
14 of them were published in the book “Temptation”, and new short stories that were previously unknown became the book “Temptation-2”.
The circulation of these works was arrested due to a lawsuit filed to recover a huge amount to pay off debts.
“Prison Diaries” (2008-2009)
He wrote these memoirs while in the punishment cell, and addressed them to his wife. Without mincing words, Sergei Panteleevich describes in his work the harsh realities of places not so remote.
“PiraMMMida” (2011)
After his imprisonment, Sergei worked for a short time on the MNK channel: he read out chapters from his works (for example, from the unpublished “Antimir”), and was also a commentator on news articles. At the same time, the film “PiraMMMida” was released, which was based on his story of the same name. The main roles were A. Serebryakov, F. Bondarchuk, P. Fedorov and E. Vilkova.
“The River” (2014) and “Zombie” (2015)
Sergei acted as a screenwriter for the film “The River”, and a year later the series “Zombie” began to be broadcast online, in which he was not only a screenwriter, but also the author of the soundtrack.
Personal life of Sergei Mavrodi
In the last years of his life, the MMM leader was divorced. He was married to Elena Pavlyuchenko from the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye. Before her marriage, she worked in a kindergarten and studied at a pedagogical institute. In 1989 she became “Vice Miss”, in 1992 - the winner of the city beauty contest, met Sergei, who presented her with a modeling agency. The young people got married, although they never lived together. As it turned out, the pyramid builder, called “New Pharaoh” in the press, did not understand in principle how one could live with a woman.
Elena Pavlyuchenko - ex-wife of Sergei Mavrodi
While in pre-trial detention, Sergei decided that he must give his beloved freedom. He himself filed for divorce and refused to see his wife. According to unofficial information, the woman later lived in the Moscow region and was involved in raising their common daughter, Irina (born in 2006).
It is known that Mavrodi did not sleep at night, but went to bed twice a day - from 6 to 10 am and in a similar period in the evening. His hobbies included fishing, hunting, books, and collecting insects.
Mavrodi preferred solitude
In his own words, Sergei Panteleevich is a supporter of complete information isolation: he was not interested in the news, did not read anything, did not watch TV. Moreover, he did not communicate with anyone unless absolutely necessary; he loved to be in company exclusively with himself. “Pharaoh” had a unique opinion about women: he compared them to stinging wasps and considered them “incompetent.”
Sergei Mavrodi preferred books to all riches
Possessing huge amounts of money, Sergei Mavrodi did not become the owner of “factories, newspapers and ships.” Even the furnishings of his apartment were surprising in their excessive simplicity - there were shelves with books, a table, a bed and aquariums.
"Glory" Mavrodi
In 2000, information was announced in the press that there were about 400 “Sergeev Mavrodi” in psychiatric hospitals in Moscow. Mavrodi’s fame haunted the movie bosses, who released the film “Pyramid” in 2011. In 2014, another film about Mavrodi, “The River,” was released, but it was not widely released. In 2015, the series “Zombies” was broadcast on YouTube, where Sergei Mavrodi authored the script and soundtracks.
Mavrodi presents his book (photo: mirnov.ru)
Sergei Mavrodi wrote the book “Son of Lucifer”, 14 short stories from which were published in 2008, others in 2012. He wrote the books “Prison Diaries” and “The Punishment Cell” about his prison life.
According to studies, 75% of Russians consider Sergei Mavrodi a thief and schemer, about 15% - a genius.
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