Over these past few months we’ve seen the rise and rise of the MMM ponzi. So far I haven’t seen too much discussion of direct action that we can take in response, but I have an idea that I hope you all might possibly read, improve, and act upon. I believe that many of you may want to act, but first need a practical and actionable idea. Here’s my idea:
The rapid growth of MMM hinges on the use of social media to spread its fraudulent and deceptive messages of extremely high ROI. I propose that we use social media against MMM by manual or scripted messaging of user accounts associated with its Facebook groups and pages.
What information should these messages contain? Of course that is up to you, but I think a good place to start would be articles detailing the results of Mavrodi’s past schemes, and his conviction in Russia for fraud. Many of his victims may not speak English and may be accessing a regional MMM Facebook page or group. It is for this reason that I think we should use Google Translate or articles in the actual languages if they are available.
Challenges to this approach include the automatic filtering of messages to the “other” Facebook inbox. If this is generally the case, then the recipients will probably not notice the messages in a timely manner. Another challenge is that we may be wasting our messages on fake or complicit accounts. And of course Facebook probably represents a tiny sliver of the social media that MMM uses to spread.
There is no doubt in my mind that many of MMM’s supporters are fully aware of its fraudulent nature, but I am also equally doubtless that most of the victims simply do not have access to the right information. We can provide that information. We can make a dent. Please improve this idea and act.
Thank you for reading this!