News of the death of Sergei Mavrodi, the Russian founder of the MMM Ponzi scheme, has reopened wounds for some of the three million Nigerians who lost their fortune in 2017. A man in his thirties from south-eastern Nigeria has told BBC Igbo how his 3.7m naira ($10,290; £7,270) investment vanished:

My experience with MMM is quite a terrible one because I had high hopes when I joined and I invested a lot of money, but at the end of the day I lost everything. I started with a little amount of money but you know how this works, greed set in. I started with £395 and as it went on, I created multiple accounts."

The investor, who asked to remain anonymous, says he was introduced to the pyramid scheme by his friends. It proved popular because of such introductions - a member would get commission after recruiting more investors.

A member’s first investment would get paid directly to another member - the idea being that after 30 days every member would reap profits of at least 30% on their investment.

The Nigerian government and senate warned against the scheme, but MMM advertised aggressively and used community forums and church meetings to recruit members.

In December 2016 MMM froze its accounts in Nigeria as there wasn’t enough money to pay out. The victim who revealed his story to BBC Igbo said it was inevitable that it would fail at some stage as it relies on new members to keep going.

When I was investing, I knew it would crash later because they are robbing Peter to pay Paul and it’s all about luck, but I didn’t expect it to crash so soon. I was thinking that when it’s time to crash, I would pull my money. In future, I will look into the company I want to invest in to ensure that they are legitimate. I was duped in this one and I can’t fall a victim of such a thing ever again."