Information security expert gives advice on how to avoid falling into the trap of scammers
Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the most famous financial pyramid of the 90s, MMM, this August. However, this ugly phenomenon has not disappeared from the lives of citizens. True, these days it has acquired an innovative shade: fraudsters often disguise their scams as investments, cryptocurrency transactions, and even online games. The day before, the authorities allowed only companies supervised by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation to provide services for publicly attracting investments from citizens, and cooperatives will now be able to attract money only from shareholders. MK found out from Timur Aitov, Chairman of the Commission on Financial and Information Security of the Council of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, whether these legislative changes will help prevent the emergence of new financial pyramids.
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— The MMM example has become a classic for us. This episode is part of the history of the formation of the domestic financial market. But the sad thing is that similar events are still repeated everywhere. You can blame the regulators, our law enforcement officers or your friends who «gave advice» for what happened. But the fastest way to find the culprit is an ordinary mirror. Is there an antidote to human stupidity and greed?
It so happened that in the nineties I worked as the head of the securities department of GUM and was involved in its privatization, in connection with which I often went to the Ministry of Finance on Ilyinka. Right next door, right behind the «Detsky Mir», there was an active sales of «MMM tickets» — that's what the head of this scam, Sergei Mavrodi, called them. These «tickets» were sold in unlimited quantities. It was clear that there was no prospectus of issue from government agencies here. Moreover, the state TV channel in prime time broadcast a massive advertisement to deceive citizens. In it, the charming Lenya Golubkov — a character known to many today from memes — demonstrated the growth of the exchange rate of tickets every evening. All this simply zombified citizens. Those who bought «tickets» then, of course, could then «sell everything»: they were accepted right there, at the points, although there were no share registers, but it was clearly an imitation of the secondary market. There were few people willing to sell. The fantastic growth of the exchange rate attracted ordinary Russians: more and more duped fellow citizens came to Mavrodi's points, giving away their last savings in the hope of getting rich. Only a few were able to make money on this scam — those who got into the so-called base of the pyramid and managed to take their money in time. But the majority lost their investments: people were simply robbed.
— Alas, there are still many pyramids, and the main idea is the same: a constant influx of fresh participants is needed to feed the pyramid and thus cover current advertising costs. They also provide payments to those who decided to jump off and «okeshitsya», that is, take cash.
The Bank of Russia identified 2,944 financial pyramids by the end of 2023, and this, of course, is far from all such projects, but this number is one and a half times more than identified in 2022 (the regulator published its data in February 2024). However, if you look at specialized sites, experts there estimate the number of pyramids at about 10 thousand. I think that in fact there are even more of them simply because the regulator, for example, does not take into account those located outside of Russia. Today, many criminals open «branches» abroad so that it is more difficult for Russian law enforcement agencies to reach them. They remain «unattended», but they still work with citizens of the Russian Federation, and all the content of their sites is published in Russian. Somehow I have not seen these sites blocked or their work «slowed down» for Russia. And there is an explanation for this: they are not with us, not in our jurisdiction, which means we can’t reach them. But I believe that if you set a goal, you can reach anyone.
— Pyramid builders know that they are outlaws, that they are being hunted, so they hide, mimic, or hide under the guise of online games. One can recall, for example, “Rich Birds.” In this online game, participants grow chickens from eggs, which they also sell, thus earning real money for themselves, but, again, necessarily attracting more and more new viewers and participants.
The coolest and already world masterpiece in this direction is the game Hamster Combat. It features a cute hamster, created by anonymous authors, on which you need to click (“tap”) more often, along the way solve various puzzles, but, again, not forgetting to attract more and more new participants to the “club of cute hamster lovers.” While the participants in this game do not receive anything in return, promotion is underway, the project is in the hype phase. All active participants are promised to get rich. Those who supposedly “tap” more and gain more points (and, of course, attract new members) will receive winnings in tokens of the newest cryptocurrency, which also does not exist yet, but will appear soon.
At one time, I jokingly told my friends that the game about the hamster was invented by sellers of electric massagers with a pulsating attachment: athletes know about them. Marketplaces already clearly demonstrate how to use these massagers: by placing the attachment against the smartphone screen, you can «tap» the hamster 100 times faster than with your finger. However, now I am sure that we need to look for the creators of the game higher up, because it is unlikely that the owners of the messenger took on the promotion of an obvious pyramid completely free of charge. I think the new crypto will be from them too.
— The Central Bank of the Russian Federation claims that the average amount of losses is somewhere around $1,000 per person. To be more precise, it is within the range of up to 100 thousand rubles.
— The Bank of Russia monitors the financial market and has been maintaining a special list of suspicious service providers for three years now. A specific organization can be easily checked on the website of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation to make sure that it has the appropriate license for certain services. Of course, you can check those who work in the territory of the Russian Federation. And foreign scammers remain without the supervision of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. But there is also a stop list of the regulator — a list of companies with identified signs of illegal activity in the financial market. And if a company is on this list, you should definitely not deal with it.
— Cooperatives are now prohibited from accepting money from citizens who are not their shareholders. Previously, for example, a garage construction cooperative (GSK), collecting money for a garage, could attract funds not only from its shareholders, but also from “sympathetic” citizens, simultaneously launching a financial pyramid and offering, say, the sale of parking spaces in the future in exchange for investments made “now”. Now, according to the law, their money must go only to construction, gates, inspection pits, that is, to core costs, and funds can only come from shareholders of this GSK.
— The most general answer is to always try to correctly assess the risks and profitability of future investments. If the profitability is high, then it is usually proportional to the risks, including the danger of losing everything. For most citizens, the most common way of investing is a deposit in a reliable bank or buying hard currency. The profitability is small, but it is a safe, conservative way of investing. True, with the current key rate, even a regular bank deposit yields 20% per annum, which is a very large income by global standards. Investments in shares, bonds and, of course, real estate are always popular with citizens — «concrete meters», like gold, rarely lose value and turn «into dust».