Abstract
Thanks to a large-scale campaign to increase the financial literacy of Russian citizens, financial pyramids began to seem like ghosts from the past, but in 2019 in Russia a significant number of financial pyramids were recorded. Financial literacy protects citizens from the so-called economic methods of involvement in dubious money enterprises. To a lesser extent, the layman is protected from psychological and sociological methods of influence. Psychology implies managing a person with controversial methods. Sociology offers the so-called crowd effect as an explanation of the phenomenon of mass insanity. This work classifies typical methods of attracting investors to the Russian financial pyramids, for which purpose a combined model of influence on citizens, including economic, psychological and sociological methods, is constructed. Based on this model, a typology of investors is proposed taking into account the methods of their involvement.