Sergei Mavrodi, founder of the infamous Ponzi scheme MMM Global, is back with a dubious new offering following a 20-plus-year history of scams: an Ethereum blockchain-based cryptocurrency.

Called Mavro, the cryptocurrency is set to launch Dec. 29 and will be a replacement for a previous coin Mavrodi launched in 2016. According to Russia Today, Mavrodi is offering to replace the previous “outdated” cryptocurrency with the “new Mavro,” based on blockchain Ethereum, “which is almost impossible to destroy.” Even more bizarrely, Mavrodi is reported to have said, “The time for change is now! We can do a lot!! Financial apocalypse is inevitable.”

Although Mavrodi may be pitching is new currency as an alternative to a financial apocalypse, anyone involved in one of his schemes is likely to face their own. Mavrodi, a former Russian parliamentarian, launched his first version of the MMM Ponzi scheme in the 1990s before being arrested and jailed for his role. After being released in 2011, Mavrodi returned with MMM Global, a bitcoin-based High Yield Investment Program scam that promised massive returns for investors.

MMM Global actually went global, including an offshoot called MMM China that at its peak was attributed a bitcoin price increase in November 2015. In January 2016, the Chinese government warned its citizens to stay well away. It said MMM worked on a “financial mutual assistance” model where money paid by new investors went to existing investors and that “such operating models present huge investment risks and their capital flows are not sustainable,” because “once the capital chain breaks, investors will face severe losses.”

Exactly how the new Mavro cryptocurrency fits into MMM isn’t entirely clear. The MMM website said it will act as “a conventional unit for measurement of provided [sic] help to other participants in MMM.” But an initial coin offering page for the cryptocurrency claims that it’s the “first decentralized and absolutely transparent platform for Multi-Level Marketing structures based on Blockchain Ethereum.”

What is clear is that those using Mavro’s as part of MMM Global are being promised increases of up to 100 percent per month when they buy into the program, indicating that once again Mavrodi is running a Ponzi scheme but this time with a cryptocurrency twist.

The advice to anyone considering investing in MMM Global or Mavros is: Don’t. Although Mavrodi has managed to somehow remain out of jail in recent years, now he has entered the ICO market, he could well come under scrutiny by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed its first action again a fraudulent ICO operator in October.

Image: Mavro