Bernie Madoff "Crook"

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Bernie Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, has been arrested and charged with running a multi-billion dollar hedge fund ...

Bernie Madoff arrested over alleged $50 billion fraud
Bernie Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, has been arrested and charged with running a multi-billion dollar hedge fund swindle in New York.

Mr Madoff is alleged to have operated the scheme through his hedge fund business, which was separate from his better-known market-making business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BMIS).

Mr Madoff told senior employees of his firm on Wednesday that "it's all just one big lie" and that he was "finished", according to a criminal complaint filed on Thursday night by the US Attorney's office and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

He allegedly went on to say that the business was "a giant Ponzi scheme" – a reference to Charles Ponzi, one of the greatest swindlers in US history – and estimated that the scheme had lost investors $50bn over many years – which would make the hedge fund one of the biggest frauds in history.

"There is no innocent explanation," Mr Madoff said, according to the criminal complaint. He told the agents that it was all his fault, and that he "paid investors with money that wasn't there", according to the complaint.

He allegedly told his employees that he had, for years, been paying returns to certain investors out of the cash received from other investors.

Mr Madoff, 70, was charged with a single count of securities fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5m if found guilty.

The criminal complaint was accompanied by a separate civil lawsuit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which accuses Mr Madoff of defrauding clients of his firm and seeks emergency relief for the victims.

"Our complaint alleges a stunning fraud – both in terms of scope and duration. We are moving quickly and decisively to stop the scheme and protect the remaining assets for investors," said Scott Friestad, the SEC's deputy enforcer.

The complaint details that as of Jan 7, 2008, Madoff's investment advisory business had assets of $17.1bn, serving up to 25 clients.

Although Mr Madoff is thought to have few direct British links, he did open a London office in 1983, with Madoff Securities International becoming one of the first American members of the London Stock Exchange.

Stephen Raven, chief executive of Madoff Securities International said: "We only became aware overnight of the news relating to our Chairman, Bernard Madoff. Our business in London is not in any way part of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC. His major shareholding in our firm is a personal investment. Our business activities are not involved in any way with the US asset management company with which the reported allegations appear to be concerned. We do not have any further information beyond what is already in the public domain."

In 2000, his market-making business BMIS partnered with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch to the form the new Primex Trading platform, one of the early rival electronic exchanges to the main bourses which eventually fell by the wayside following a partnership with NASDAQ.

BMIS is also credited with ending the old practice of quoting New York Stock Exchange-listed securities in eighths of a dollar in 1997, instead listing them in sixteenths.

Mr Madoff began BMIS with just $5,000 of savings from jobs lifeguarding at Rockaway Beach and installing sprinkler systems.

The firm grew to become a leading market maker, with brother Peter, nephew Charles, niece Shana, and sons Mark and Andrew all involved in the business at some stage in recent years.

His firm's website claims that BMIS ranks among the top one per cent of US securities firms, and states that "clients know Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining... high ethical standards."

Mr Madoff's lawyer, Dan Horwitz, called his client "a person of integrity" and said he intends to fight the charge. "We will fight to get through this unfortunate set of events." His client was released on a $10m bond secured by his New York apartment.

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JUNE 30, 2009. >: 'Evil'  Madoff Gets 150 Years in Epic Fraud
Victims Cheer Tough Sentence; Judge Slams Financier for Stonewalling Investigators; True Size of Losses Still a Mystery



Bernard Madoff, the self-confessed author of the biggest financial swindle in history, was sentenced to the maximum 150 years behind bars for what his judge called an "extraordinarily evil" fraud that shook the nation's faith in its financial and legal systems and took "a staggering toll" on rich and poor alike.

The landmark sentence, one of the stiffest ever given for a white-collar crime, came just six months after Mr. Madoff, a pioneer on Wall Street, allegedly told his sons that his entire business was a massive Ponzi scheme. The penalty sparked a burst of applause in a courtroom packed with victims of the fraud.

Earlier, nine of those victims confronted Mr. Madoff in court, calling him a "monster" and a "low life."

"I hope his sentence is long enough so his jail cell will become his coffin," said Michael Schwartz, 33 years old, of New Jersey, who said his family's funds with Madoff had been for the care of his mentally disabled brother.

U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin noted that more than 100 victims had written letters to him, citing one from a widow who said she went to see Mr. Madoff two weeks after the death of her husband, who had invested their life savings with him. Mr. Madoff put his arm around the widow and said, "Your money is safe with me," according to the letter Judge Chin cited. Judge Chin said Mr. Madoff didn't receive a single letter or statement of support before the sentencing.

Mr. Madoff, dressed in a charcoal gray suit and wearing rimless glasses, appeared without a single member of his family in attendance. He kept his back to the victims as they spoke. But for a brief moment during his remarks, he turned around to face them and said: "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't help you."

Mr. Madoff, 71, also told the court, "I will live with this pain, with this torment, for the rest of my life."

While the trial phase of Mr. Madoff's legal battle is ended, many questions remain unanswered. The public still doesn't know the exact breadth of the losses and whether co-conspirators were involved. The case has also highlighted shortcomings of financial watchdogs, particularly the Securities and Exchange Commission, which failed to catch the crime despite repeated warnings.

Judge Chin faulted Mr. Madoff for failing to be more forthcoming with authorities since his Dec. 11 arrest. "I don't get a sense that Mr. Madoff has done all he could, or told all that he knows," the judge said.

During a short statement in court, Mr. Madoff spoke softly and pressed his hands against the defense table. He continued to insulate his family and co-workers, saying they were lied to. Family members who worked at the firm, as well as some employees, remain under scrutiny but haven't been charged. He periodically drank water from a paper cup.

"I cannot offer you an excuse for my behavior," Mr. Madoff said. "How do you excuse betraying thousands of investors who entrusted me with their life savings? How do you excuse deceiving 200 employees who spent most of their working life with me? How do you excuse lying to a brother and two sons who spent their entire lives helping to build a successful business? How do you excuse lying to a wife who stood by you for 50 years?"

Mr. Madoff's wife, Ruth Madoff, after the sentencing made her first public statement, saying that "like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years."

Mr. Madoff's attorney, Ira Sorkin, said that Mr. Madoff was a "deeply flawed individual" but maintained that most of the fraud money went to other investors. He added that the $13 billion figure cited by the government as the net losses suffered by account holders since 1995 was overstated, since at least $1 billion in recovered assets will be returned to investors, and perhaps a lot more. The judge said that was irrelevant to the case. Mr. Sorkin said Mr. Madoff deserved only 12 years in prison, since he was 71 and had helped the government in its investigation -- a statement Judge Chin questioned.

After the sentence, Mr. Sorkin said he hadn't decided whether to appeal. "The judge has ruled," he said. Because the sentence is within the federal sentencing guidelines for the case, which are advisory, few lawyers believe an appeals court would rule that it's too high.

The sentence marked a victory for federal prosecutors who asked for the 150-year sentence, the statutory maximum for the 11 criminal counts he pled guilty to, citing the fraud's size and duration. Mr. Madoff ran the Ponzi scheme for at least 20 years, prosecutors say.

It's unclear where Mr. Madoff will do his time; the decision is made by the Bureau of Prisons. Mr. Sorkin asked for a medium-security prison in Otisville, N.Y., but Judge Chin said only that he would recommend to the bureau that it choose an appropriate facility in the Northeast.

Bureau of Prisons guidelines recommend a high-security prison facility for inmates serving sentences longer than 30 years. However, the bureau may still determine that a lower-security prison is appropriate.

There's no parole in the federal system. Mr. Madoff is eligible for 15% off from his original sentence for good behavior, which would still leave him facing at least 127 years.

The sentencing, while high, isn't a record for financial fraud. In the past decade there have been sentences as high as 330 and 845 years.

The case continues to reverberate on Wall Street. Michael Holland, chairman of Holland & Co., a New York investment company, says he thinks the Madoff case is one reason a number of investors, including wealthy families, endowments and charities, are moving from using a money manager to more "passive" investment strategies, such as index funds that track broad markets and leave less room for individuals to direct money.

"The future of the money-management business looks less rosy," he says. "Years ago, people had to have their money managed somewhere, but today you may not be able to charge the large fees and live in Palm Beach to do it."

But some are skeptical the impact from the Madoff case will be long lasting.

"Every time you get a bubble that bursts, scams come to light, but 10 years down the road we'll be well past this, it will be ancient history," says Bert Ely, a longtime banking consultant in Alexandria, Va. "There always will be new scammers and they won't be dissuaded by this. He's getting life in jail but look at all the great years he's had."

—Gregory Zuckerman, Ashby Jones, Robert Copeland and Chad Bray contributed to this article.
Write to Robert Frank at [email protected] and Amir Efrati at [email protected]

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

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Video results for bernie madoff victims
Madoff  Victims List Released (FULL LIST ...
www.huffingtonpost.com
 
Link...
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=bernie+madoff+victims&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=L3xcStfSNIje8wSD-MnWDQ&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=14#

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Bernie  Madoff's Wife  Withdrew 15 Million in Days Before Arrest
In the latest news to emerge from the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme investigation, it has been revealed that his wife withdrew $15 Million just days before he was arrested.

It's unclear at this point the level of knowledge that his wife had into his affairs, or whether or not she was instructed by Bernie Madoff to make certain transactions on his behalf. What is known is that Ruth Madoff withdrew $15 Million in two separate transactions in the days leading up to her husband's arrest on charges of running the largest fraud and ponzi scheme in U.S. history. She withdrew $5.5 Million on November 25th and another $10 Million on December 10.

Madoff was arrested on December 11, only one day after the last withdraw made by his wife. The details of the Madoff ponzi scheme are still being sorted out by investigators, but it's clear that Madoff had orchestrated a highly complex system of investor fraud and had several companies through which he charged brokerage fees for services he never provided.

As high profile investors and Wall Street titans are revealed to have been associated with Madoff, we continue to see just how weak and vulnerable our financial system can be. Even though Madoff was operating - it appear - largely on his own, he controlled an enormous amount of assets on behalf of his clients. This same level of fraud and deception could easily occur within the larger financial institutions that control Wall Street - and the SEC would likely never know or be powerful enough to stop it. All pretty scary in light of the fact that the citizens of the United States are now about to pump another trillion dollars or so into a system that is clearly broken.

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  Bernie Madoff's Scam "Larger Than Enron"    

The world is still stunned by the brazen scam run by Bernie Madoff. Although there's some gallows humor about the debacle--mostly along the lines of "Bernie Made Off with my money"--there's also a lot of fear about how damaging this scandal could be.

The Wall Street Journal describes the world wide impact of Madoff's alleged fraud:

Christopher Miller, chief executive of London hedge fund ratings agency Allenbridge Hedgeinfo, said: "Some very big investor names are involved in this. The scheme could only work if enough investors were subscribing for him to pay money out. Some of the world's biggest hedge funds have been hit by this. There will be a monumental impact for the hedge fund industry, it could be larger then Enron.

"Some investors in Madoff's funds face 100% write-downs on the money they invested, they will suddenly be nursing full write-downs in December. When people realize the magnitude of this it will be fizzing around the stratosphere."

One asset manager based in Switzerland, home to many high-net-worth individuals who invest in funds of hedge funds, said: "Everyone's talking about this in Geneva. Several wealthy investors could be facing big losses."

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The Man Who Figured Out Madoff's Scheme
Tells 60 Minutes Many Suspected Madoff Fraud; Says SEC Is Incapable Of Finding Fraud

CBS)  This story was first published on March 1, 2009. It was updated on June 10, 2009.

Later this month, Bernard L. Madoff will be sentenced for what is believed to be the largest financial fraud in history. He will most likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. Yet there is still much we don't know about the scam, which involved by some account a fraud of more than $50 billion. Investigators are still trying to figure out who all was involved and where the money went.

But the proof that it happened can be found in the ruined lives of thousands of victims. The one person who knows the most and is willing to talk about it is Harry Markopolos, the man who figured out Madoff's scheme before anyone else.

Markopolos sat down with 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft earlier this year for his first television interview .


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Until a few months ago, Harry Markopolos was an obscure financial analyst and mildly eccentric fraud investigator from Boston who most people would never notice on the street.

But today he enjoys an almost heroic status, pursued by journalists and movie producers, and honored by colleagues as the man who went to the Securities and Exchange Commission and blew the whistle on Bernie Madoff and his $50 billion fraud.

But he seems uncomfortable with the attention, and knows that he is no hero. "I stand before you a 50 billion dollar failure," he said at an event.

Asked how many times he sent materials to the SEC, Markopolos told Kroft, "May 2000. October 2001. October, November, and December of 2005. Then again June 2007. And finally April 2008. So five separate SEC submissions."

"And in spite of all of the things that you did, it still ended up in disaster?" Kroft asked.

"There's nothing to be proud about in this case. I feel horrible about the result. It's been a total disaster for the victims," Markopolos replied.

It began a decade ago, when Markopolos was working for a Boston investment firm. His boss told him that Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange, was running a huge unregistered hedge fund that was producing incredible returns. He wanted Markopolos to reverse-engineer its trading strategy and revenue streams so the firm could duplicate Madoff's results.

"He had the patina of being a respected citizen. One of the most successful businessmen in New York, and certainly, one of the most powerful men on Wall Street. You would never suspect him of fraud. Unless you knew the math," Markopolos told Kroft.

"I mean, you're like a math guy, right?" Kroft asked.

"I've taken all the calculus courses, from integral calculus through differential calculus, as well as linear algebra. And statistics, both normal and non-normal," Markopolos said.

Asked how long it took him to figure out something was wrong, Markopolos said, "It took me five minutes to know that it was a fraud. It took me another almost four hours of mathematical modeling to prove that it was a fraud. "

It was the performance line that Markopolos said caught his attention. "As we know, markets go up and down, and his only went up. He had very few down months. Only four percent of the months were down months. And that would be equivalent to a baseball player in the major leagues batting .960 for a year. Clearly impossible. You would suspect cheating immediately."

"Maybe he was just good," Kroft remarked.

"No one's that good," Markopolos said.

(CBS)  Markopolos said there were only two plausible explanations: either Madoff was using insider information to rack up the huge profits or he was running a giant Ponzi scheme.

"So either way, he was doing something illegal?" Kroft asked.

"Either way, I knew he was going to go to prison," Markopolos replied.

In May 2000, Markopolos took his suspicions about Bernie Madoff to the Boston office of Securities and Exchange Commission.

Asked if he had any financial motive, Markopolos said, "Yes. He was a competitor of mine in 2000 to 2004, while I was still in the industry. And when someone's competing on your playing field, who's a dirty player, you want him tossed off the field."

He also thought he might be eligible for a sizable reward if the fraud involved insider trading, but that turned out not to be the case.

"In your first letter to the S.E.C. back in 2000, you're a little tentative. You say, 'Look, I have no hard evidence, no smoking gun,'" Kroft remarked.

"In 2000, it was more theoretical. In 2001, it was a little bit more real. By 2005, I had 29 red flags that you just couldn't miss on. By 2005, the degree of certainty was approaching 100 percent," Markopolos explained.

Over time and with some simple math calculations, Markopolos concluded that for Madoff to execute the trading strategy he said he was using he would have had to buy more options on the Chicago Board Options Exchange than actually existed, yet he says no one he spoke to there remembered making a single trade with Bernard Madoff's fund.

"I would talk to the people I had trading relationships with and ask, 'Did you have a trading relationship with Mr. Bernard Madoff?' And they all said, 'No. We don't think he's for real,'" Markopolos said.

He said he found no one who ever had traded with Madoff. "And I traded with some of the largest equity derivatives firms in the world."

And that's because Madoff's investment fund never actually made any trades, at least going back to 1993, and probably further - a fact confirmed at a meeting of Madoff investors by the trustee charged with liquidating Madoff's assets. No one knew the depth of the fraud but a lot of people had questions.

"Who else figured this out besides you?" Kroft asked.

"I would say that hundreds of people suspected something was amiss with the Madoff operation. If you look at who the victims were not, you'll notice that the major firms on Wall Street had no money with Mr. Madoff," Markopolos said.

"I'm quoting from the letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, red flag number 20. 'Madoff is suspected of being a fraud by some of the world's largest, most sophisticated financial services firms.' And then you list some of the firms," Kroft said. "The biggest firms on Wall Street. And conversations with people high up in those firms."

"That is correct. And the SEC ignored that," Markopolos said. "All the SEC had to do was pick up the phone. They never did."

"If you had executives at the biggest investment houses on Wall Street that knew something was wrong, why do you think they didn't go to the SEC?" Kroft asked.

"Because people in glass houses don't throw stones. And self regulation on Wall Street doesn't work," Markopolos said.

(CBS)  In January 2006 the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission finally opened a case file to look into Markopolos' allegations about Bernie Madoff. Despite uncovering evidence that Madoff had mislead them about his investment activities, the SEC closed the case 11 months later without ever opening a formal investigation. The staff said there was "no evidence of fraud."

"What I found out from my dealings with the SEC over eight and a half years is that their people are totally untrained in finance; they're unschooled; they're un-credentialed. Most of them are just merely lawyers without any financial industry experience," Markopolos said.

"Well, if the people there aren't trained in securities work, what are they trained in?" Kroft asked.

"How to look at pieces of paper that the securities laws require. They can check every piece of paper perfectly and find misdemeanors, and they'll miss all the financial felonies that are occurring because they never look there," Markopolos replied. "Even when pointed to fraud, they're incapable of finding fraud."

No one at the SEC would talk to 60 Minutes on the record about Markopolos' allegations. But one person who seemed to have had a high opinion of the agency was Bernie Madoff.

"I'm very close with the regulators so I'm not trying to say that what they do is bad. As a matter of fact, my niece just married one," Madoff said in 2007.

Besides his niece's husband, who left the SEC last year, Madoff had longstanding ties to agency and was called upon to give advice. At a 2007 meeting of a non-profit group called The Philoctetes Center, he seemed to think the SEC was doing a great job.

"In today's regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to violate rules. This is something that the public really doesn't understand. But it's impossible for a violation to go undetected, certainly not for a considerable period of time," Madoff said.


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Click here to watch the full video of the 2007 meeting at The Philoctetes Center.



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But don't try to tell that to The Philoctetes Center. Its main benefactor, the and Betty and Norman Levy Foundation, was fully invested in Madoff.

It is one of dozens of charitable organizations that have been devastated or wiped out. Madoff's customer list, single spaced with small type, is 162 pages long with victims running the gamut from Hollywood royalty to a carpenters' pension fund in Syracuse, New York.

Shelly Ludlow was forced to put her mother in a Medicaid-assisted living facility while she packed up their apartment to move in with a friend. All because of Bernie Madoff.

"Our whole life has been turned upside down by this man that sits in his penthouse and smirks," Ludlow said.

The same day in February, 70 miles away, Len and Marge Forrest were leaving the house they just sold in Setauket, Long Island and were preparing to drive to South Florida to sell their condo there. They had their money with Madoff for 30 years and lost an eight-figure family fortune two days before his 80th birthday.

Len Forrest told Kroft he thinks they had enough money to live on for 60 days.

Asked if he knows other people who are in the same situation, Forrest told Kroft, "Oh yes, We have a lot-unfortunately. And I think probably the thing that tears me up more than anything is the fact that I recommended Madoff to a number of people .And they lost their money, and I'll never stop feeling responsible for that. They were all close family and friends."

Forrest and his friends thought they part of a small exclusive group of investors lucky enough to have a connection with Bernie Madoff, and because they thought they were making 12 percent a year, they were not inclined to ask a lot of questions. Harry Markopolos called it the classic affinity scam.

(CBS)  "An affinity scam is when you prey on groups that are similar in nature to yourself. So I'm Greek. If I was gonna run an affinity scam, I would run it on the Greek American community here," Markopolos explained. "Bernie was Jewish, so he ran it on the Jewish community in the United States. But that wouldn't get him enough customers, 'cause he always needed new money to keep the scheme going."

Over time, Madoff extended his reach from New York to Palm Beach, Fla., where he enlisted hundreds of wealthy clients, many of them recruited from his own country clubs. And he also made connections that gave him entree to Europe, and the hedge funds capital of America, Greenwich, Conn.

It was in Greenwich that Bernie Madoff made some of his biggest deals with large investment firms that were willing to feed him billions of dollars of their clients' money to manage. And in return, Bernie Madoff agreed to pay the so-called feeder funds a fortune in annual fees. The largest of the feeder funds was the Fairfield Greenwich Group.

"How much money did Fairfield make off Bernie Madoff every year?" Kroft asked Markopolos.

"Hundreds of millions of dollars," he replied.

"If you're a feeder fund or a fund of funds thing, what's your responsibility? What are you supposed to do for those hundreds of millions of dollars?" Kroft asked.

"You're supposed to identify the world's best hedge funds managers and invest only in them. And you're supposed to make sure they're not running Ponzi schemes," Markopolos said.

"The real steroids here were the feeder funds. That's what made it an international Ponzi scheme," attorney David Boies told Kroft.

Boies, one of the most prominent lawyers in the country, is representing Fairfield Greenwich investors, who lost nearly $7 billon when Madoff went under. They are suing the firm for gross negligence, claiming it failed to investigate Madoff thoroughly or monitor his activities as it promised to do in its marketing materials.

"Analysis of portfolio composition, portfolio stress testing, risk management, asset verification. Do you think that really happened?" Kroft asked.

"No. We know it didn't happen. Because we know all they did was turn the money over to Bernie Madoff. And they did that for 20 years," Boies said. "They essentially did nothing except lose their investors' money. And enjoy very luxurious lifestyles from the money they took out."

Walter Noel, one of the founding partners of Fairfield Greenwich, declined to talk to 60 Minutes and was reportedly lying low with his wife at their compound on the private island of Mustique. But in a statement to 60 Minutes, his firm said it too was a victim of Bernie Madoff, that it had placed too much trust in his "then-impeccable...reputation" and in the fact that there had been "multiple reviews of Madoff by the SEC."


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Click here to read the full Fairfield Greenwich statement.



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In the end, Harry Markopolos had been right about Bernie Madoff. He would be going to prison, but not because of anything that Markopolos or the SEC did. In a bad economy, Madoff's lies simply collapsed under their own weight.

"No one was investigating Mr. Madoff at the end," Markopolos said.

"So he turned himself in before anybody, in a position of authority, began a serious investigation?" Kroft asked.

"That's typically how the SEC does it," Markopolos said. "They come in after the crime has been committed, they toe-tag the victims, count the bodies, and try to figure out who the crooks were after the fact, which does none of us any good."

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Scam of The Century...

Link...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28256310/

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Bernie Madoff's Victims: The List

EARLIER: Word on the identities of Bernie Madoff's clients / victimes continues to emerge. The total losses reported so far add up to about $30 billion.  Please add new names to comments (or via email to [email protected]).

Text list below.  ALSO SEE THE SLIDESHOW >

Bernie Madoff's Victims (So Far)

HSBC "has emerged as one the largest victims of Bernard Madoff's alleged fraud with potential exposure of about $1bn...HSBC's exposure stemmed from loans it provided to institutional clients, mainly hedge funds of funds, that wanted to invest with Mr Madoff. HSBC's direct exposure is believed to be about $1bn in loans provided to clients who invested some $500m of their own funds in Mr Madoff's venture. Under the typical terms of these deals, if the US authorities recover any funds from Mr Madoff, HSBC will be paid first, with its clients suffering the first tranche of losses." (FT:)

Access International.  $1.4 billion

Fortis Bank. $1.4 billion

Man Group's RMF division has about $350m invested in funds which outsourced their management to Madoff securities, although this is a tiny fraction of the division's $25bn of assets. (FT)

Tremont Capital. Fund of funds. $3.3 billion invested.  (FT)

Pioneer Investments, an arm of Italy's UniCredit, had "substantially all" of $835m invested with Madoff. (FT)

Union Bancaire Privet: $1.1 billion

Benbasset & Cie: $935 million

BBVA: $404 million

Maxam Capital Management LLC.  Combined loss of $280 million. "I'm wiped out," said Sandra Manzke, Maxam's founder and chairman. The Darien, Conn., fund of hedge funds will have to close as a result of the losses, she said. (WSJ)

Fairfield Greenwich Group.  Bloomberg: The biggest loser may be Walter Noel's Fairfield Greenwich Group, whose $7.3 billion Fairfield Sentry Ltd. invested with Madoff's eponymous firm, three people familiar with the matter said... Fairfield Sentry has a record of more than 15 years with an annual return of 4 to 6 percentage points above benchmark interest rates, according to a marketing document dated this month that was prepared by Zurich-based NPB New Private Bank Ltd. On an absolute basis, returns exceeded 10 percent every year from 1991 through 2000. Since then, they ranged from 6.4 percent to 9.8 percent...The strategy is a "split-strike conversion," where the investment manager buys shares of large U.S. companies and enters into options contracts to limit the risk, the document says.

Fix Asset Management.  Bloomberg: Fix Asset Management, which had an account worth at least $400 million with Madoff Investments. The firm said it's checking with lawyers about the holdings. "We are very shocked," John Fix, the son of founder Charles Fix, said by phone from Greece. "We put in redemptions in the past few months and got our money back no problem. We are just so surprised about all this."

Kingate Management Ltd.  Bloomberg says $2.8 billion Kingate Global Fund Ltd. invested with Madoff.

Santander. WSJ: The eurozone's largest bank by market value, said its clients had an exposure of €2.33 billion ($3.1 billion) to Madoff's investment funds, mainly through its Optimal Strategic US Equity fund. More than €2 billion belongs to institutional investors and international clients of its private-banking business, which provides services to wealthy individuals, it said. The remaining €320 million belongs to private-banking customers in Spain, where Santander is based.

Thyssen Family.  Source sends the following: Thybo Investments grew out of a family office for Thyssen. They have been in fund of funds it seems since 1989. Thybo International is a "proper" fund of fund but it's newer share class G invests only in one manager - and i'm 99% sure it's Madoff as the returns are almost the same. Some more info. The fund started in Jan 2007.  Ernst & Young. Luxembourg  are the auditors. UBS Luxembourg is the administrator.  Thybo states on their webpage: "Our track record incorporates audited financial statements at both a composite firm-wide and individual portfolios level."

Ira Roth's family.  WSJ: Ira Roth, a New Jersey resident, who says his family has about $1 million invested through Mr. Madoff's firm, is "in a state of panic." He said his 86-year-old mother-in-law has been living on the investments' returns, and he has been using the funds to pay college tuition.

Sterling Equities. Fund controlled by Fred Wilpon, co-owner of the NY Mets, confirms it had money with Madoff.

Stephen Abbott, a San Francisco lawyer.  WSJ: [Abbott] and two siblings had several hundred thousand dollars invested with Mr. Madoff. They inherited the trust from their father, who had befriended Mr. Madoff years ago. Performance remained steady through the current bear market, he said. "People were floored," he says. "We were making money in this lousy market." He says he is concerned about recovering the money but "you have to get philosophical about this stuff. It could be worse; we still have our health."

Palm Beach Country Club.  Source: CNBC's David Faber

Lawrence Velvel, "69, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, said he and a friend may have lost millions of dollars between them (AP). "This is a major disaster for a lot of people," Velvel said in a telephone interview from his Andover, Mass., office. "You work all your life, you finally manage to save up something, and somebody who's entrusted with it, it turns out suddenly he's a crook. Lots of people are getting fully or partially wiped out." Velvel said he wants to know where government regulators, as well as accountants and others at Madoff's company, were when the money was being lost." (AP)

Loeb Family. Source: CNBC's David Faber

J. Ezra Merkin. GMAC LLC Chairman. WSJ: Mr. Merkin, the chairman of former General Motors Corp. financing arm GMAC, is also a money manager at Ascot Partners LLC in New York. Ascot, which had $1.8 billion under management as of Sept. 30, had substantially all of its assets invested with Mr. Madoff, according to a letter to Mr. Merkin sent to clients Thursday night. Mr. Merkin said as one of the largest investors in Ascot, he believed he had personally "suffered major losses from this catastrophe."

Norman Braman. Former Philadelphia Eagles owner

Leonard Feinstein, co-founder of retailer Bed Bath & Beyond. (WSJ)

Mort Zuckerman. Mr. Zuckerman, the chairman of real-estate firm Boston Properties and owner of the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, had significant exposure through a fund that invested substantially all of its assets with Mr. Madoff (WSJ)

Richard Spring.  WSJ: A Boca Raton resident and former securities analyst, says he had about $11 million -- or 95% of his net worth -- invested with Mr. Madoff. "That's how much I believed in him," Mr. Spring said.

Elie Wiesel's Foundation For Humanity.  Lost $37 million.

Members of half-a-dozen country clubs:  WSJ: "Mr. Madoff tapped social networks in Dallas, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis. In Minnesota, he attracted investors from Hillcrest Golf Club of St. Paul and Oak Ridge Country Club in Hopkins, investors say. One of them estimated that investors from the two clubs may have invested more than $100 million combined. One of the largest clusters of Madoff investors was in Florida, where losses could be substantial. Mr. Madoff relied on a network of friends, family and business colleagues to attract investors. According to investors and agents, some of these agents were paid commissions for harvesting investors. Others had separate, lucrative business relationships with Mr. Madoff. "If you were eating lunch at the club or golfing, everyone was always talking about how Madoff was making them all this money," one investor says. "Everyone wanted to sign up." Jeff Fischer, a top divorce attorney in Palm Beach, says many of his clients were also Mr. Madoff's clients. "Every big divorce that came through my office had portfolio positions with Madoff," he says. Two of his investors said that among his clients, Mr. Madoff was considered a money-management legend; they would joke that if Mr. Madoff was a fraud, he'd take down half the world with him."

Bramdean Alternatives in the U.K.  9% of portfolio.

Banque Benedict Hentsch, Geneva-based private bank, $47.5 million.

Nomura and Neue Privat Bank. "Marketed access to Fairfield Sentry Ltd., a fund overseen by Mr. Madoff and sold through Fairfield Greenwich. The shares offered by Neue Privat and Nomura were leveraged three times -- meaning $3 of borrowed money was added to every $1 of capital invested in order to magnify returns, greatly increasing the potential losses for those investors." (WSJ)

Unicredit. The Italian firm had unspecified amount with Madoff via its Dublin-based Pioneer alt-asset group. (MarketWatch)

Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Unspecified (Newsday).

Robert Lappin Foundation in Massachusetts closed its doors today and is citing relationship to Maddoff fund. $8MM foundation plus personal holdings. Foundation supported Jewish organizations throughout North Shore of Massachusetts. (source: Jewish Journal)

Wunderkinder Foundation, a Steven Spielberg charity. In the past the foundation "appears to have invested a significant portion of its assets with Mr. Madoff, based on regulatory filings. In 2006, the Madoff firm accounted for roughly 70% of the foundation's interest and dividend income, according to regulatory filings. A representative of Mr. Spielberg confirmed that the foundation has suffered losses on its investments with the Madoff firm. He said he didn't know the size of the losses and couldn't comment further, including on whether Mr. Spielberg had any of his own money invested with the Madoff firm." WSJ

BNP Paribas. "BNP Paribas's exposure, the extent of which is not clear, may stem from BNP's lending relationship with a fund of funds that was a big Madoff client, said people familiar with the matter. A BNP spokeswoman declined to comment." WSJ: BNP, France's largest bank by market value, said it could lose as much as 350 million euros as a result of the alleged fraud. The bank said it has no investment of its own in the hedge funds managed by Bernard Madoff Investment Services. BNP Paribas, however, said it is exposed to these funds through its trading business and lending to hedge funds that had invested in Madoff's funds.

Ira Rennert. Vicky Ward of Vanity Fair, said on CNBC."Heavily, heavily invested."

Englebardt family of Los Angeles. (Reader)

Swiss private bank Reichmuth & Co. "said its clients had an exposure of some 385 million Swiss francs to Madoff funds. The bank said Reichmuth Matterhorn, a fund that invests in other hedge funds, faced a potential loss of about 8.6% on its exposure to Madoff. That amount represented about 3.5% of the 11 billion Swiss Francs Reichmuth & Co. has under management, the bank said." (WSJ)

Union Bancaire Privee. UBP spokesman said the bank's clients have "limited" losses related to Madoff, but wouldn't be more specific or comment further. (WSJ)

EIM Group, the European investment manager with about $11 billion in assets, had a number of non-U.S. investors into funds overseen by Mr. Madoff, according to people familiar with the matter. Overall, EIM assets at risk are less than 2% of what it manages, which means losses could top $200 million. (WSJ).

UBS: ""Very limited" direct exposure to the Madoff funds...But the Zurich-based bank's wealth-management arm helped clients in Europe and possibly elsewhere invest with Mr. Madoff, according to investment professionals in Europe who spoke with some of these clients. UBS is currently reviewing its clients' exposure to Mr. Madoff's funds, according to the person familiar with the matter. The person said the funds weren't on UBS's list of "recommended" investments for its U.S. clients, but that they may have been among the firm's suggested investments for overseas clients." (WSJ)

Stephen A. Fine, president of Biltrite Corp. (Reader)

Avram and Carol Goldberg, former owners of the Stop & Shop supermarket chain (Reader)

Helfman family of Miami. (Reader)

Saul Katz, co-owner of the New York Mets.

Irwin Kellner, of Port Washington. (Reader)

Carl and Ruth Shapiro, donors to Brandeis University, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The Boston Globe reported on Saturday that the Shapiro family foundation lost almost half its money, or about $145 million.


Fairfield County, Connecticut.  Bloomberg: First Selectman Ken Flatto and other elected officials in Fairfield, Connecticut, thought the 58,000- person town's pension fund was holding up well amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.  The 18 percent decline in total assets since the end of June looked smart compared with the 31 percent plunge in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, and total assets of $286 million left a cushion over the $270 million of estimated liabilities. Flatto's mood darkened yesterday when he heard Bernard Madoff, a Wall Street executive who oversaw $42 million of the assets, had been arrested and charged with fraud.  "We classified this on our portfolio as one of the more conservative investments," Flatto said in an interview. "You rely on your experts and your managers to be honest."

Royal Bank of Scotland: $330 million

Nomura: $302 million

Aozora Bank: $137 million

Various Boston families: The Boston Globe.

Jeff Katzenberg. Dreamworks CEO has "millions" in Madoff losses. (WSJ)

Gerald Breslauer.  Jeff Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg's financial advisor. WSJ: According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Breslauer himself has likely sustained heavy losses in the Madoff affair. He customarily invests alongside his clients, say these people, and has sometimes been a larger investor than the people he represented. People familiar with the matter said Mr. Breslauer was known to be a Madoff investor.

Yeshiva University lost $100 million to $110 million. (NYT)

Jewish Federation of Greater Washington said it had $10 million invested with Mr. Madoff, about 8 percent of its endowment as of Nov. 30. The organization said it would work to recover the money. (NYT)

North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System: $5.7 million exposure to Madoff Securities in the form of a gift from a donor who insisted that it be invested that way. "The donor who contributed the funds has graciously agreed to reimburse the health system for any financial loss," the organization said in a statement. (NYT)

Ramaz School lost some $6 million invested with Mr. Madoff, according to a letter sent to board members and two parents whose children attend the school. (NYT)

SAR Academy, a Jewish school in the Bronx, had roughly a third of its $3.7 million in assets invested with Mr. Madoff, according to an e-mail message it sent to donors and parents. (NYT)

Chais Family Foundation in Encino, Calif., announced over the weekend that its losses had forced it to stop operating, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The foundation had $178 million in assets in May 2007, according to its tax form. (NYT)

JEHT Foundation. May have lost hundreds of millions. Will cease operations. (NYT)

Arpad Busson. Uma Thurman's billionaire fiance runs hedge fund, EIM, which was reportedly exposed to roughly $270 million of products sold by Madoff (Mail on Sunday)

Accountants Scott Sosnik & Larry Bell. Accountants who worked for many of Madoff victims claim that they too lost money.

Swiss insurer Baloise. $13 million. (Reuters)

Swiss Re: Less than $3 million (Reuters)

Burt Ross. Former Ft. Lee, NJ mayor lost $5 million.

Maimonides School. Boston school lost $3 million. (Boston.com)

Charles & Cindi Nadler Foundation. $10 million.

Tufts University $20 million (Boston.com)

Alexandra Penney. Artist and author lost bulk of her life savings. (Daily Beast)

Robert Chew. Colorado-based investor. (TIME)

Fair Food Foundation. Detroit-based urban farming group. (NYMag)

Pasha S. Anwar and Julia Anwar. Investors first to sue Fairfield Greenwich. (DealBook)

Pedro Almodovar. Famed Spanish film director has $240,000 "at risk" (Bloomberg)

More as we get them...

Don't Miss: Bernie Madoff's Victims: The Slideshow >
Link...
http://www.businessinsider.com/madoff-victim-fred-wilpon-sterling-equities

[aaron28]

It is alarming how almost a dozen people have tried to report Madoff as a crook and were ignored. Madoff will burn in his afterlife for screwing over so many people. It is amazing it has lasted so long. Great posts.

[setravis]

No joy for many Madoff victims, despite settlement
DAVID B. CARUSO - AP - Sat Dec 18, 2:43PM CST


NEW YORK (AP) — The news that some of Bernard Madoff's victims could be getting half their money back was of little comfort to Richard and Cynthia Friedman, and others who saw their life savings erased in the mammoth fraud.

Just days earlier, the Long Island couple learned that Richard's 85-year-old mother was one of hundreds of longtime Madoff clients sued in recent weeks for millions by the trustee handling the case.

"He is going after innocent people," Cynthia Friedman said of the trustee, Irving Picard.

Picard's announcement Friday of a jaw-dropping $7.2 billion settlement from one of Madoff's richest investors left the Friedmans and other middle-income Madoff victims with mixed feelings.

Some fear that hedge funds will get the bulk of the cash being recovered, while others — especially those with modest incomes — worry that Picard will continue to sue them for what's left of their scarce savings.

The recent claim against Shirley Friedman, 85, offered a blunt, familiar argument: Yes, the family's investment had been wiped out. But over the many years Friedman had been a Madoff client, her annual withdrawals from his funds had exceeded the amount of her late husband's original investment.

As a result, according to Picard, she owed $3.6 million.

To the family, targeting an old lady with Alzheimer's disease, and others like her, seemed cruel.

"Many of these people are old, sick,and have been impoverished," said Richard Friedman. "Some of them are now terrified. They don't have money to pay an attorney."

After two years of trying to claw back false returns paid to big banks, hedge funds and money managers who never questioned the unbelievable profits they were earning from Madoff, Picard sent a wave of letters this month initiating legal action against a large group of smaller investors, including some who were wiped out in the scandal.

At a news conference Friday, Picard expressed sympathy for the victims he is suing and acknowledged that a large number of them were unaware of the Ponzi scheme. He said people with poor finances could enroll in a hardship program that might exempt them from having to make payments.

On Friday, the widow of Florida philanthropist Jeffry Picower agreed to return $7.2 billion her husband had received in profit over the decades from Madoff's fund.

Combined with other settlements and seizures, that brought the total amount of money available for victims to more than $10 billion, or about half of the money invested with the fraud king.

It isn't clear, however, just how many Madoff victims will ever see a dime of it.

Picard has so far authorized payments to fewer than 2,400 of the nearly 16,500 Madoff customers who filed a claim for a share of recovered money.

Many of those claims were denied because they were filed by people who had invested in Madoff indirectly, through a fund run by someone else. They could still wind up receiving a share, but it will be up to the fund managers to redistribute any money they are awarded.

"I don't quite get how we will ever see a penny," said Matt Weinstein. The motivational speaker, along with his wife, Geneen Roth, an author of best-selling books on compulsive eating, lost the bulk of their life savings in a Madoff feeder fund.

Peter Leveton, a Madoff victim who lives near Denver, said he worried that even if funds like the one he invested in do get paid, managers will use the money to cover their substantial legal fees and operating expenses.

"So, what trickles down is going to be a very small portion of what people invested," he said.

Other victims, like Shirley Friedman, were rejected because they had been living off interest generated by their Madoff accounts, and as a result had collected more money from the Ponzi scheme than they originally put in.

"There are thousands of victims that (Picard) is saying owe him money, and these are people who had no knowledge of the fraud," said Ronnie Sue Ambrosino, who leads a group of Madoff victims who have been fighting for restitution.

"I'm hoping that this $7 billion settlement will make him see the light and do the right thing and not pursue the other victims," she said.

At his Friday news conference, Picard stressed that the money he is seeking was all stolen from other Madoff victims, many of whom lost everything, too.

"We must recover those funds and restore them to their rightful owners," he said. "However, and I underscore the however, we recognize that many individuals are not in a financial position to return part or even all of their excess withdrawals and we are prepared, as we always have been, to work with them."

More than 200 people have entered the harship program so far, he said. Picard said he also preferred to settle, rather than fight, and had discretion not to seek money from people who couldn't afford to pay.

"We only know the problem these people have if they come forward and share the information with us, and then we can act," he said.

If Picard is successful in only the biggest of his clawback actions, the total amount of money recovered for Madoff victims could exceed what they actually invested.

In just one lawsuit, he has sought $19.6 billion from a collection of banks associated with a Madoff associate in Europe, who he accused of being part of a criminal and fraudulent scheme to recruit new investors his Ponzi scheme.

___

Associated Press Writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.

[setravis]

  Madoff says banks had to know of Ponzi scheme: report 

NEW YORK | Tue Feb 15, 2011 10:14pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A frail Bernard Madoff, facing the rest of his life in prison, said a variety of banks and hedge funds were complicit in and "had to know" about his epic Ponzi scheme before it was uncovered, The New York Times reported.

In his first interview for publication since his December 2008 arrest, Madoff said banks and hedge funds who dealt with his investment advisory firm demonstrated a "willful blindness" toward his activities, and failed to examine discrepancies between his regulatory filings and other information.

"They had to know," Madoff, described as noticeably thinner and dressed in khaki prison clothing, said in a visiting room in the federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. "But the attitude was sort of, 'If you're doing something wrong, we don't want to know.'"

Madoff, 72, is serving a 150-year prison sentence for what prosecutors called his $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which was uncovered in December 2008.

Irving Picard, a court-appointed trustee seeking money for Madoff victims, has filed lawsuits seeking tens of billions of dollars from companies and individuals he believes benefited from or aided in Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

NO EXCUSES

Among the defendants in these cases is JPMorgan Chase & Co, long Madoff's principal banker and described by Picard as "thoroughly complicit" in the Ponzi scheme.

Other defendants include HSBC Holdings Plc, UBS AG, various "feeder funds" that steered money to Madoff, and the owners of the New York Mets baseball team.

A spokesman for Picard did not immediately return a request for comment. Picard declined to comment to the newspaper. He has recovered about $10 billion for victims so far.

Stephen Cutler, JPMorgan's general counsel, at a presentation on Tuesday said Picard "overreached" in his $6.4 billion lawsuit against the bank, and that JPMorgan "did not know about or in any way participate in the fraud."

In the Times interview, conducted in conjunction with a forthcoming book, Madoff acknowledged his guilt and said nothing could excuse his crimes.

He did not assert that any specific bank or hedge fund knew about or was an accomplice in his Ponzi scheme, which Picard said cost investors more than $20 billion.

METS EXECUTIVES DIDN'T KNOW, MADOFF SAYS

But in a December 19 email cited in the Times article, Madoff said he had been providing Picard with "information I knew would be instrumental in recovering assets from those people complicit in the mess I put myself into."

Then, 10 days later, he said "the banks and funds were complicit in one form or another and my information to Picard when he was here established this."

As to Mets principals Fred Wilpon and his brother-in-law Saul Katz, Madoff said: "They knew nothing. They knew nothing."

In the December 19 email, Madoff also said he had not shared his information with federal prosecutors working on criminal cases related to the fraud.

Eight people have been criminally charged. Madoff, his right hand man Frank DiPascali, and an outside accountant have pleaded guilty. Five, all of whom used to work for Madoff, have pleaded not guilty.

Madoff also told the Times he never thought the collapse of his Ponzi scheme would cause the kind of fallout that has befallen his family.

Picard has filed lawsuits against Madoff's wife, Ruth, that could bankrupt her, while Madoff's son Mark committed suicide on December 11, 2010, two years after the Ponzi scheme was revealed.

Madoff said prison officials would not let him attend his son's funeral, saying it could pose a "public safety issue." He later said it would be "cruel" to put his family through what could be a "media circus" were he to attend.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


As for my personal opinion, You reap what you sow!
You sorry SOB!!! 

[setravis]

In plea, ex-Madoff man admits falsifying records...

On Monday June 6, 2011, 3:44 pm

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former employee at convicted financier Bernard Madoff's firm admitted to adding fake employees to the payroll and creating fraudulent accounts, part of a plea deal on Monday over bank fraud and other charges.

The former payroll manager, Eric Lipkin, told U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in New York that in 22 years of employment in the investment advisory arm of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, he conspired with others to falsify records and deceive authorities.

Madoff, 73, and eight others have been criminally charged with running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that collapsed in December 2008, shaking up regulators who missed years of warning signs of the fraud.

Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in March 2009 for what is considered the biggest investment fraud in history. A Ponzi scheme is one in which early investors are paid with the money of new clients.

Lipkin told the judge that from at least 1986, "I created false payroll records."

As one example of putting "no show" employees on the payroll, he said that in 2008 he was instructed by operations manager Daniel Bonventre to put Bonventre's son on the payroll. The son and others who did not work at the firm received salaries and benefits.

Bonventre and other former employees have also been charged and are free on bail pending trial, including Annette Bongiorno, Joann Crupi, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez.

Under Lipkin's plea agreement, he will cooperate with the office of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney and the FBI in its investigation of the Madoff fraud.

Lipkin, 37, also said in Manhattan federal court that he created false reports to be sent to the Depository Trust Co (now called the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp) clearing house for buyers and sellers of securities.

"I knew these documents were false because they were created by me," said Lipkin, who was released on bail of $2.5 million after the plea proceeding.

Lipkin said the false reports were given to auditors to mislead them.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it filed civil charges against Lipkin, who had consented to a proposed partial judgment, which must be approved by a court. It said Lipkin received annual bonuses from Bernard Madoff and received $720,000 from him to buy a house, an amount he never repaid.

Lipkin pled guilty to criminal charges of conspiracy and falsifying books and records to commit bank fraud. The most serious charge of bank fraud carries a maximum possible 30-year prison sentence.

The case is USA v O'Hara et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 10-228.

[setravis]

Madoff trustee adds claims in $2 billion UBS lawsuit
Wednesday August 17, 2011, 4:48 pm

Securities Investor Protection Act (SIPA) Trustee Irving Picard speaks as Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara (L) looks on during a news conference in New York, announcing the return of $7.2 billion from the estate of Madoff insider Jeffry Picower to settle civil claims for victims of Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme December 17, 2010. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The trustee seeking money for victims of Bernard Madoff's fraud on Wednesday filed an amended lawsuit seeking at least $2 billion from UBS AG and related defendants.

Irving Picard, the trustee, accused the Swiss bank of intentionally misleading a Luxembourg securities regulator as well as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about its ties to Madoff.

UBS and other banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co and HSBC Holdings Plc have questioned Picard's authority to bring many of his claims.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does he really care if he has authority? Any basis for truth? any way to prove his claims? No! He is building "Billable Hours" win lose or draw, he gets paid and the victims, well who cares, they were stupid enough to get sucked in in the first place! Just a bad system filled with equally bad actors!

Note to reporters and other Picard boosters: The ALLOWED CLAIM victims of this scam--the largest in US financial history--have not received the first dime from the billions that Picard has
supposedly recovered. In the meantime, his law firm has billed the government hundreds of millions in largely unsubstantiated fees. His billing appears to be as opaque as Madoff's accounting.

The major shortcomings in American Justice is to pay lawyers w/ taxpayers' money...Too many loopholes and too
much underhanded complicities... Toward the end, the citizens became victimized because of those politicians of little or no principles and integrity!!

Lawyers, lawmaker, lawsuits!!!
We all lose when dealing with these crooks..

[setravis]

Who's Worse: U.S. Banks or Bernie Madoff?

The Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme is back in the news this week with two big headlines. The most recent involves new allegations that the Securities and Exchange Commission illegally destroyed files for at least 9,000 preliminary investigations over the last two decades -- including documents that pertained to the jailed former money manager.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Madoff's victims can only fight to recoup the amount of their principal investment, not (fictitious) profits earned by the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. That's welcome news for Irving Picard, the attorney in charge of liquidating Madoff's assets.

It's been nearly three years since Madoff was arrested, but the story still grabs headlines owing to the fact that so many questions have yet to be answered. Harry Markopolous, the Madoff whistle-blower and the focus of the new documentary Chasing Madoff, tells The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task that interest in the case remains because justice has yet to be served. He compares the $65 billion injustice to the bailout of U.S. banks, which hit taxpayers with a multitrillion-dollar bill.


"It is not over. You can see that the criminals -- the white-collar criminals -- got away with the biggest bank heist in history," says Markopolous, who is also the author of No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller. "It was the same in the Madoff case. Only nine people have been arrested in the Madoff case. Well, it's way too few. Same like the bankers. They had the biggest bank heist in history, and they got away with it. Not one person went to jail, and they got bailed out and paid themselves bonuses."

After you watch the accompanying video, tell us what you think. Do you believe that the actions of the U.S. banks have been as bad or worse than the Madoff Ponzi scheme?

http://cohenmedia.net/main.html

http://www.amazon.com/No-One-Would-Listen-Financial/dp/0470553731

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/madoff-trustee-gets-a-green-light-on-clawbacks/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/business/sec-illegally-destroyed-documents-whistle-blower-alleges.html