Sergei Mavrodi, the notorious mastermind of the MMM pyramid scheme which robbed millions of Russians in the 1990s, will spend five days in jail after a failure to pay a 1,000 ruble ($33) fine for an uncpecified administrative offense.
A Moscow magistrate court ordered the arrest on Wednesday citing Mavrodi’s refusal to pay the fine for a long time.
According to Lifenews.ru, the fraudster told the court that he could not pay the fine because he is broke.
The collapse of Mavrodi's 1990s MMM pyramid scheme cost millions of Russians their life savings. The scam attracted between two and five million investors who lost around $1.5 billion when it collapsed. He served a four-and-a-half-year sentence and was released in May 2007.
In 2008, the courts released 18 million rubles ($610,000) belonging to Mavrodi. The money was shared among some of the investors. Court authorities also appropriated Mavrodi's rights for his book Temptation that he published the same year.
In 2011, Mavrodi unveiled his new scheme, which uses the online payment system, WebMoney, to allow investors to buy tickets that work like shares, but have no real value. He promised investors returns of 20-30 percent per month.
Russia’s Finance Ministry immediately called his new project “a cynical lie,” and WebMoney promised to keep an eye on his scheme.
