You May Not Like It But MMM Has Crashed

Days after ‘Global Financial Networking scheme’, MMM announced a freeze on the account of members, there has been understandable panic among its members. The scheme, described by Wikipedia as a Ponzi scheme is not exactly new after it burnt the fingers of thousands of people in Zimbabwe and Kenya. Despite warnings from the CBN, SEC and the House of Representatives, the scheme’s promise of a 30% return on investment, as well as a 10% referral bonus, made it wildly popular. In less than one year of the scheme’s operation, it had amassed 2.4 million members in Nigeria. The freeze has created uncertainty among some Nigerians while others remain resolute in their belief that the scheme has its ‘methods’ and can never crash. The massive sums ‘invested’ and equally massive amounts some people have received ensures that proving MMM is a simple pyramid scheme set up to fleece people is hardly going to be based on logic. I have had conversations with various MMM participants this week and I came off astonished at how effective the propaganda of MMM global is. The participants have said the same things when I’ve confronted them with the common sense question, “If you have no idea where the 30% revenue comes from, why are you so certain it cannot crash?” “You don’t understand the methodology” “It can’t crash because people are still providing help’ “It didn’t crash in South Africa, they only paused it” Of all the responses I received, the last was the most puzzling and above all, it showed that in the face of greed and desperation, common sense can easily be suspended. The top MMM guider, Chuddy Udorji who reportedly brought the scheme to Nigeria has made a whopping N5 billion from the scheme and it doesn’t get any more hilarious than knowing his wife wrote a letter to participants urging them to ‘have patience’ Hard not to be patient when you’ve cleared an easy N5 billion of people’s money. So, how are we so sure our darling MMM has crashed? First, the ‘guiders’ have explained the people requesting help have exceeded the people providing help. It’s not exactly rocket science, MMM simply gives you money someone else has put in the system, so there’s only so many people that can request help before it crashes. The owners of the scheme, who need to make a hefty chunk of money will always request help without first providing it, creating an imbalance in the system. Websites are expensive to maintain, especially those that receive lots of traffic; it is extremely naive to believe that anyone would spend all that money because he loves Nigerians and wants everyone to make money. The harsh truth is, there’s no way this scheme will get back on its feet in January, not with the loss of confidence it has suffered. Would you put your money into it in January? That said, you win some, you lose some.