ouch £50 billion fraud

[jimbo]

if your gona be a bear best be a grizzly ouch

they lent 50 billion to a con man and i cant borrow 50 quid


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.



By James Quinn, Wall Street Correspondent
Last Updated: 10:41AM GMT 15 Dec 2008

Bernie Madoff, former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market Photo: AP


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.

[gmc]

Will any of the idiots in our banks that invested in this funds lose their jobs? No of course not-probably get a knighthood for making gordie boy look good.

Banks fear for billions in Wall St 'scam' - Business News, Business - The Independent

Madoff Securities was also a member of five self-regulatory organisations, including US independent securities regulator Finra and the Nasdaq.

Nicola Horlick, who manages Bramdean Alternatives, which had 9% of its funds invested with Madoff's scheme, said the SEC had given it a "clean bill of health".

Mind you I have little sympathy for those whose greed got in the way of common sense.

[Galbally]

OK, lets just everyone get this straight so we know where we are.

The guy who was the chairman of the NASDAQ Stock Exchange turns out to be the world's greatest ever conman in history???

He has defrauded $50,000,000,000 thats fifty thousand million dollars of other people's money.

He admits now that his very highly respected and regarded investment fund (subscribed to by some of the world's richest individuals and most powerful institutions) was simply a classy pyramid scheme, and has always a complete sham for the decades its been running, and no one in the SEC or any of the banks that invested in this bunko artist's fraud were able to determine this for years?

THIS IS WHAT THESE PEOPLE DO FOR A LIVING, AND PAID MILLIONS TO DO SO, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS BLOWN ON A SCAM A CHILD CAN RUN, IS ANYONE OF THESE USELESS "SUITS" EVER GOING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONCE IN THEIR MISERABLE, IDIOTIC, PAMPERED LIVES?

Scarily, these are the same people that have been given the responsibility to control the money supply of entire continents, finance the world economy, and basically run everything. This must surely prove they are idiots and they either don't have a clue what they are doing, or they don't care enough to ever check hard enough about what they are doing.

The only reason this ended is because of the credit crunch, and the fact that many people needed to cash in their "investment" because of the other nonsense that was going on. So what other major financial and investment schemes are going to turn out to be frauds and con jobs??? One can only guess.

[spot]

Assuming he's guilty and writing allegedly all through my post, I wonder what he'll be sentenced to?

An average sentence for embezzling $200,000 from an employer, if you're in charge of the books, is around 4 years. Let's scale it up and refuse to allow him to serve any of his time concurrently.

That makes...

One million years in jail.

Alternatively we could hand him a medal for helping to destroy deregulated Capitalism. That gets my vote.

Just out of interest, does anyone think if Osama bin Laden had negotiated terms in 2000 instead of sending in his plane hijackers, and that consequently the Bush White House couldn't have sent the US Armed Forces into the Middle East, the US would have been hit by the bank collapse and the manufacturing collapse and the hedge fund collapse and the general dismemberment of unregulated Capitalism which follows? I think one reason for the burnout of Capitalism is the loss of face, loss of confidence and loss of a half trillion dollars so far in extra military costs which Osama bin Laden forced - shall we use the word forced? - on the White House.

In which case, regardless of how much people may dislike the notion, he's won his war. He's got hundreds of times more sympathisers backing fundamentalist interpretations of Islam too, which was his key objective. Get someone to fight you and you gain allies and goodwill, it's simple.

Why it wasn't treated as a criminal act and prosecuted by police work, however large-scale and however much it involved military backup, I simply cannot understand.

Centrally planned Communism disintegrated in 1989. Capitalism did the same in 2008. We're all of us re-inventing the world now.

[along-for-the-ride]

Another plaque in the hall of shame.

[gmc]

posted by spot

Centrally planned Communism disintegrated in 1989. Capitalism did the same in 2008. We're all of us re-inventing the world now.

Communism holds the seeds for it's own destruction anyway, which point the intellectual left never seem to understand, and the russian version of it went down the **** hole back when stalin took control. What's happened in america is corporatism, arguably it's because they moved away from capitalism they ended up in the state they are in now.

The regulators who kept giving his funds a clear bill of health need looking at as well.

Originally Posted by gmc

posted by spot


Communism holds the seeds for it's own destruction anyway, which point the intellectual left never seem to understand, and the russian version of it went down the **** hole back when stalin took control. What's happened in america is corporatism, arguably it's because they moved away from capitalism they ended up in the state they are in now.

The regulators who kept giving his funds a clear bill of health need looking at as well.

The regulators should be punished to the same extent as the perpetrator.

[spot]

I have a quote:

In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules. And this is something the public really doesn’t understand. And if you read things in the newspaper and you see somebody, you know, violate a rule, you say, well, you know, they’re always doing this. But it’s impossible for you to go—for a violation to go undetected, certainly not for a considerable period of time.

Who said it? The chap they arrested, back when he was chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, before he violated the rules.

So much for regulatory frameworks. And this is eight years into the Bush White House's watch? Where does the buck stop?

[Bryn Mawr]

Originally Posted by spot

I have a quote:

In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules. And this is something the public really doesn’t understand. And if you read things in the newspaper and you see somebody, you know, violate a rule, you say, well, you know, they’re always doing this. But it’s impossible for you to go—for a violation to go undetected, certainly not for a considerable period of time.

Who said it? The chap they arrested, back when he was chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, before he violated the rules.

So much for regulatory frameworks. And this is eight years into the Bush White House's watch? Where does the buck stop?

After the Enron scandal they put up a whole slew of new legislation called the Sarbanes Oxley act supposedly to prevent just such an occurrence as this. It has been an absolute pain in the proverbial to comply with as it is so intrusive into our work patterns and for what? It obviously has not addressed the problem or prevented its recurrence.

[spot]

Originally Posted by Bryn Mawr

After the Enron scandal they put up a whole slew of new legislation called the Sarbanes Oxley act supposedly to prevent just such an occurrence as this. It has been an absolute pain in the proverbial to comply with as it is so intrusive into our work patterns and for what? It obviously has not addressed the problem or prevented its recurrence.

You're not an American plutocrat though. Go and chair NASDAQ for a year and then try.