Bernard Madoff arrested

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Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 5:17 am

Quote:

Bernard Madoff, a quiet force on Wall Street for decades, was arrested and charged on Thursday with allegedly running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme in what may rank among the biggest fraud cases ever.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081212/bs_nm/us_madoff_arrest

Not quite a Newb Joined: 07 Aug 2007 Posts: 62

If you're going to go for it, you may as well go for it big.

20 years and a $5 million fine ( probably out in 10 years). Not a bad return for $50 billion. Shocked

Wonder how much he managed to stash in Swiss banks?

Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 1:33 pm

^^^
I've got his money in a couple of trunk boxes in Burkino Faso.
Can you help me move it? I'll give you 30%.

Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 12:50 am

How long before that modaluty comes to life?

Quote:

FROM MISS LISIA Madoiff
ABIDJAN.IVORY COAST.
COTE D'IVOIRE.

APPEAL FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE.

Dear Guardian,

Good day to you over there, I am delighted to write to you. I am very sorry if this mail may come to you as an embarrassment or a surprise, I just felt like emptying myself to you, to confide in you, as am faced with total frustration and hardship life here. My Earnest prayer is that you find this mail in good health and blessings. To introduce myself my name is Miss Lisia Manuel The illigitimate daughter of Bernard Madof My father was a very wealth biusness men in Wall Streets USA

My father was arrested by police for embrazzked funs during the economic crisis that going on in hus country Wall Stret USA since year 2002. My mother died when I was a two years old during her childbirth and since then my father took me so special as only child. Before the arrest of my father on December 2008 in a email he secretly c told me that he has the sum of forty Seven Billion,Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars. USD($47,000,500,000) left in one of the private security/finances trust services house here in Abidjan Ivory Coast that he deposited & decleared it's values as a family valuables such as Gold, Jewelry and family belongings for security reason that he used my names her only daughter for the next of kin in depositing of the consignment with this company .

However, before last breathing free air and going to be Pastor Franks Bitch, my father he advised & instructed me that I should seek for a foreign guardian in a country of my choice where I will transfer this money and use it for investment purpose such as real estate management or hotel management for my life safety because presently now I am not at the legal age to claim the consignment yet unless I have a foriegn guardian like you.

Therefore,I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in this regards.Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded.

Now permit me to ask you these few questions:-

(1) Can you help me for the retrievements of this Consignment 18 wheeler and trailer on my behalf in the security company custody here and to help me to provide a bank account in which the fund therein would be transferred into?

(2) Can you stand as a guardian of this fund for me since I am only 21 years old?

(3) Can you kindly help me to make an arrangement to come over to your country to further my Education and to secure a resident permit in your country as soon as recieve the Consignment?

(4) Can you honestly take me as your own and help me out?

(5) Can I completely trust you?

(6) What percentage of the total amount in question will be good for you
after the money is in your possesion?

Please,consider this and get back to me as soon as possible if you are interested.

Hopefully to hear from you ASAP?

Best Regards,

Your respectful one,

Miss Lisia Madoff

Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:59 pm

My uncle was invested heavily in that %$#@wad. So was my school. God, I'm scared.

Chuck Norris Joined: 11 Jun 2007 Posts: 1369

Here is a new story about this scandal:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081213/wall_street_arrest.html

I hope your school & uncle come out okay through this, CY.

Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 6:30 am

As more is published, it just keeps getting worse. It makes you quite ill Sad

Quote:

The town of Fairfield, Conn., said it placed nearly 15 percent of its retiree pension fund with Madoff. Officials were scrambling to determine how much of the $42 million remained.

Quote:

A charity in Massachusetts that supports Jewish programs, the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, said it had invested its entire $8 million endowment with Madoff. The organization's executive director said she doesn't expect it to survive.

I'm so sorry, Chain Yanker Sad

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 9:59 am

I may email Santander, who are in for $3.1 Billion, and suggest that they register at Scamwarners.

And Uk superguru Nicola Horlick, who is in for 9% of her company's fund, however much that is, recently (before she knew the truth) said "This guy has managed to return 1% -1.2% per month, year after year after year." Sorry Nicola, but if it looks like, walks and talks like a PONZI, you should walk away. They'll get it back though, when the diplomat comes through with her consignment of alluvial gold dust.

Sorry to anyone here who has had money lost on their behalf.

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 12:42 pm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7783236.stm suggests it may have been going on for decades.
What's the point in financial regulators if they can't spot frauds like this?

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 7103 Location: Yes

He was not a hedge fund and as such, he had mostly private or closely-held investors -- which were not very open to disclosing their investments to regulators. A hedge fund, by contrast, usually has large public institutional investors, who have to disclose their books and show where their money is coming from, and therefore, at least a peek at Madoff's strategies.

The SEC did investigate him in 1992, but found no wrong-doing -- it's not clear from what we know today when the true "Ponzi" part of the scheme developed. Many suspected that, since he was a market maker, he was timing his own investments (and those of his clients) to coincide with the effect of some of the larger trades he was putting through, and thus getting abnormally stable returns all these years. And perhaps he was doing that for a while, but in the end, it's clear that he had built up such a good name for himself, that he could always draw in new investors and pay off his current ones in a timely fashion. It was only the unique circumstances of this market crash that left him without the ability to make redemption payments when demanded.

Remember that the SEC doesn't just go in and audit companies -- it needs complaints to arouse its suspicion.

The more interesting question is why all those "professional" money managers allowed their clients' funds to go to Madoff despite the absolutely suspicious stability of his returns over decades -- something simply no one else had done. Imagine 10-11% every year for 30 years. Most funds will give you 25% one year, 2% the next year, and -17% in year 3. Then year 4 is back to +18%. Over time, you may average 10-11%, but you'll never get that exact amount every year. There are many stories of money managers advising their clients against Madoff b/c they simply couldn't figure out how he did it, which was a big enough red flag for them to recommend against him.

Truly bizarre however.

Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:29 pm

Here's an excellent article about why people get taken in by scammers, whether they are stupid lowlife West African scum operating unsophisticated 419 or lottery scams, or educated urbane intelligent New York lowlife scum operating sophisticated financial frauds.

Quote:

Madoff relied on 'irrational euphoria'

By Kevin Connolly
BBC News, Washington

If I had a dollar for every news story in which the golden rule of investment has been dusted off and repeated over the last five days, I would be able to pay back Bernie Madoff's investors myself.

If something sounds too good to be true, I keep reading, that must be because it is too good to be true.

It is good advice as far as it goes and it raises the question of why so many wealthy, sophisticated savers were apparently conned into believing that Mr Madoff had come up with an investment strategy that allowed him to pay handsome returns even when the stock market was falling.

I asked a very senior regulator about this, a man who has been involved in formulating public policy for many years, and he said the answer was depressingly simple.

People are prone to believe what they want to believe, he said, and in rising markets a kind of irrational euphoria takes hold in which we are not inclined to ask difficult questions.

Human psychology

The point about Bernie Madoff was not so much what he was selling, it was how he sold it.

On offer was a fairly standard hedge fund arrangement in which the Madoff firm bought stock in a company and then hedged against the risk by striking contracts to both buy and sell shares in the company at agreed dates in the future.

In the jargon of Wall Street that is a "collar". It is perfectly legal, but it requires endless resources of luck, judgement, money and timing.

What made Mr Madoff unusual was the manner in which he recruited his investors.

For that he relied on a powerful but elementary piece of human psychology: the more someone tells you that you cannot have something, the more you want it.

Membership of the Madoff fund was very strictly by invitation only - merely being rich was not enough in itself.

Clients were recruited through the social networks of which Mr Madoff and his wife were themselves members - many were Jewish New Yorkers who spent part of the year in Florida.

Others came across the charming, wealthy, discreet giant of Wall Street at the golf club or the yachting marina.

The very respectability of the clientele helped with further recruitment.

Madoff customers were directors of charities and managers of investment funds as well as wealthy business people and pensioners.

They were mainly, in other words, people who should have known better and they fell for one of the oldest illusions in the book: that there is an inside track in the world of investment.

Mr Madoff fed that illusion, and offered himself as the man who could offer you access to that magic, secret circle.

Too respectable

The giant bailout of the American financial system earlier this year introduced the concept of the bank that is "too big to fail", in other words, is of such importance to the world's financial system that governments decide that propping it up with public money is better than allowing it to suffer the consequences of its own greed or incompetence.

In his own way, Mr Madoff was something similar - an investment adviser who was too respectable to scrutinise.

As former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange, Mr Madoff was a huge figure on Wall Street - his thoughtful analysis of how modern regulatory systems made cheating virtually impossible has been one of the most-viewed clips on YouTube in the last few days.

The regulatory authorities, now that they have finally woken up, are now assessing how much of Mr Madoff's clients' money has actually been lost and how much if any might be recovered.

The particular nature of the alleged fraud means, however, that existing clients seem to have been paid out of money taken from new customers as they joined the scheme. That probably means that if Mr Madoff owes you money at the moment, the chances are that you will not be getting back.

It is not clear how many people working for Mr Madoff knew what he was really up to with the funds collected from wealthy investors.

It has been widely reported that he operated this side of his business on a separate floor of the Manhattan skyscraper where his main company was based and it is even possible that he did not tell anyone else what was really going on until he explained it to his sons last week.

The court proceedings that grow out of all of this are likely to be complex and highly technical, but a friend of mine who works in the banking sector says the best way of understanding Mr Madoff is to compare him to the kind of racing tipsters who advertise their services in the back of sporting newspapers.

They too offer inside knowledge in return for a fee and should be asked the same question that more people should have asked Mr Madoff - if this scheme for making money is really so good, why sell it at all?

Why not simply use the technique to make money yourself?

I asked the regulator if the world would learn a lesson from the Madoff case and, depressingly, he was doubtful that it would.

These kind of schemes are only possible in a rising market and the next time the market is rising strongly - as it surely will one day - that old feeling of irrational euphoria will take over.

The reason we are easy to fool in the end, is because we are so good at fooling ourselves.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/7786813.stm

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 7103 Location: Yes

Interestingly, the SEC is now admitting it missed obvious signs (even evidence) of his mis-deeds: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/business/17madoff.html

Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:40 pm

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about how people were making their checks payable to this cocktard and he was actually the one mailing them their statements. I would like to think that such would throw up a red flag, but you never can tell. I mean, he seemed to be a legit business guy I guess. And, there is an element of trust involved. It's a shame people take advantage like this. There is always risk when investing, but this is not the kind of risk one should have to worry about.

Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 6:59 pm

Quote:

Thierry de la Villehuchet, 65, who lost more than a billion dollars in the scam, was found dead in his Manhattan office early Tuesday with pills around him and his arm slit with a box cutter, the New York City police said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gojXE-lbHRDXPCStoib93NvcyNCA
Crying or Very sad

I am so puzzled by how Bernie could lose 50 billion dollars. Confused

Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 7:46 pm

@falnsb can you post that in the scamwarner.com?
A nice explication of how it works and why and it should make victims feel better that no one is immune for those tricks.
Thanks.

And finally we have something for our lads to measure up to, Nigerians are just kids in the world of scamming. Sad

Just a tad smarter, they hardly ever get caught on the job Confused

Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 7:50 pm

One of my baiting characters had most of his money invested with Madoff. He's down to his last one or two million USD. More than enough to make the lad's eyes light up though.

Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 8:20 pm

Not that it matters as a man has lost his life now, but in the commission of a crime, say a bank robbery and a person suffers a heart attack and dies 3 weeks later, the bank robber can be charged with that death . . . hmmmm. We all know nothing will come of the death mentioned above but it would be nice to see Bernie pay.

Robbing people with a handshake pays so much better than robbing them with a gun.

Baiting Guru Joined: 11 May 2004 Posts: 2163

lotta wrote:

I am so puzzled by how Bernie could lose 50 billion dollars. Confused

At the nudie bar

Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 11:57 pm

This even got people at Nomura securities concerned. They had to post a warning on their website (in Japanese of course).

And Madoff was the head of a stock exchange.....

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 12:33 am

My understanding is the SEC was warned about him several years ago. He claimed he was making money trading futures... to make the kind of money he claimed he was making he would have had to trade more futures than were ever traded in a particular year.

He was taking money in and betting very badly on the direction of the economy.

There are many many charities that had their entire endowment with him and they will cease to exist. That will mean bad things for a lot of people all over the world, those that can least afford it. Crying or Very sad

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Dec 2005 Posts: 3551

^^^ One of the 'charitable' organizations is the Innocence Project that claims to have helped 226 people be freed from wrongful convictions. There is no punishment to fit the staggering scope of his crime.

*** BANNED *** Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 2049

Yes it was shocking . . . he hooked up with a transvestite who performed as Elton John . . . he got totally sucked in and lost all the money.

Here's the latest news story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8p-7muKVz0

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 1:31 am

Pachanga wrote:

^^^ One of the 'charitable' organizations is the Innocence Project

Yep....and my family donated a huge amount to the Innocence Project Crying or Very sad

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 1:40 am

Besides the finacial losses, the sheer shanda of it all overwhelms me. As my dad put it, "Madoff is Christmas come early for anti-Semites".

Did I mention Madoff was closely associated with my school? He was.

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 1:55 am

~ Gold Hat,

UNBELIEVABLE BUT NICE LEGS Embarassed