MMM Attracted Transactions 6 Times Bigger Than Nigeria's Budget on Defense - Report

MMM

 

The latest annual report of the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum released in Abuja reveals how Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox Ponzi scheme, saw financial transactions which is six times more than Nigeria's budget on defense. The Nigerian version of Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox Ponzi scheme, popularly called MMM-Nigeria, launched in November 2015, saw over N28.7 billion financial transactions before its closure on December 13, 2016, a figure that is six times more than Nigeria’s budget on defence.

 

This figure was released in the annual report of the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) 2016 released Tuesday in Abuja.

 

The report indicated that as at December 2016, one year after the scheme started in Nigeria, it is estimated that MMM had over 2.5 million registered Nigerians in its scheme.

“Between June 2016 and December 13, 2016, which forms our review time frame, over 460,000 (four hundred and sixty thousand) MMM transactions of Inter-bank nature were carried out to a tune of N28.7 Billion.

 

"To put this amount into perspective, the 2017 budget for the DHQ is N4.7 Billion. This implies that the amount transferred by Nigerians within the MMM Ponzi scheme would have funded the DHQ almost six times over,” the report indicated.

 

Also, the value of the MMM transactions in 6 months was greater than the Ministry of Eductaion’s budget by 61 per cent.

 

The report also indicated that majority of the transfers made by customers of banks that participated in the MMM Ponzi scheme was made through the account-to-account transfer platform. This was followed by the Mobile Channel, and lastly, through the web channels of other transfer platforms in the industry.

 

A further breakdown of the transactions showed that the account-to-account transfer channel had the bulk of transactions with 456,652 transactions valued at N28, 494, 406, 383. The next was the mobile platform with 2,920 transactions valued at N188, 501,512 and the web platform saw 1, 351 transactions worth N66, 584, 448.

 

The report also indicated that customers of 34 financial institutions paid out money for investments into the MMM-Nigeria Ponzi scheme. The customers include customers of commercial banks, customers of Mobile Payment Operators and even customers of mortgage banks.