September 6 — Leningrad was restored its historical name — Saint Petersburg.
July 31 — the first advertising PR stunt of the financial “pyramid” MMM JSC took place. That day was declared a day of free travel on the Moscow Metro for all residents and guests of the capital, since a certain “MMM” cooperative paid all the related costs.
MMM was registered as a Joint-Stock Company on October 20, 1992. At first, it was allowed to issue no more than 991 thousand shares. But since they sold out very quickly, the company’s management tried to register a second issue—this time for a billion shares. After receiving a refusal from the Ministry of Finance, the head of the company, Sergei Mavrodi, introduced into circulation the so-called “MMM tickets,” which were not formally securities. At the same time, the company’s management actively converted the shares circulating alongside the MMM tickets into bearer securities. On February 1, 1994, they went on open sale at face value of 1,000 rubles. Their sale was accompanied by extremely clever and effective TV advertising. Over six months, the prices of MMM papers rose 127-fold, and the number of the company’s depositors, according to various sources, reached 10–15 million people.
Six months later, the share price was cut by 127 times, back to the original 1,000 rubles. At the same time, it was announced that prices would now rise twice as fast, quadrupling every month. Huge lines again formed at MMM to buy the cheaper shares and tickets. Cash deposits into MMM began to be measured in astronomical sums.
On August 3, 1994, Mavrodi was arrested on suspicion of fraud. After that began the “action-packed” story of MMM’s collapse. It included: the storming of the company’s building by the tax inspection and riot police, mass unrest by deceived investors, Mavrodi’s election as a State Duma deputy, and the unprecedented stripping of his parliamentary mandate.
On September 22, 1997, MMM JSC was declared bankrupt.
In 1998, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia brought new fraud charges against Sergei Mavrodi. He stayed in hiding for more than five years, and on January 31, 2003, he was arrested in Moscow, in a rented apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment, and sentenced to 4.5 years in prison.
On May 22, 2007, Mavrodi was released. And in 2011 he created a new financial pyramid, “MMM-2011,” reorganized a year later into “MMM-2012”; from 2014 the system was transformed into an international project, MMM-Global...
On March 26, 2018, Sergei Mavrodi died suddenly of a heart attack.