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**Marc** · 18-12-2008, 11:10 AM

Yeah Right!

Cheers

Marc

**Marc** · 18-12-2008, 11:12 AM

Signs of trouble

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff

Outside analysts raised concerns with Madoff's firm for years. Financial analyst Harry Markopolos complained to the SEC's Boston office in May 1999 telling the SEC staff they should investigate Madoff because it was impossible for the kind of profit Madoff claimed to have been made legally. Among the suspicious signs were the fact that Madoff's company avoided filing disclosures of its holdings with the SEC by selling its holdings for cash at the end of each period. Such a tactic is highly unusual. Improbably steady investment returns despite exceedingly volatile markets was another red flag. A longtime friend said that "his rate of return [...] was never attention-grabbing, just solid 12-13 percent year in, year out". Robert Ivanhoe, chairman of the real estate practice of the law firm Greenberg Traurig, added that Madoff increased his allure by refusing some investors.

The SEC said it conducted two inquiries of Madoff in the last several years and did not find major problems. An SEC statement detailed that inspectors examined Madoff's brokerage operation in 2005, finding three violations of rules requiring brokers to obtain the best possible price for customer orders, while in 2007, SEC enforcement staff completed an investigation and did not refer the matter to the SEC commissioners for legal action.

Charles Gradante, co-founder of hedge-fund research firm Hennessee Group, observed that Madoff "only had five down months since 1996",and commented on Madoff's investment performance: "You can't go 10 or 15 years with only three or four down months. It's just impossible."

Madoff also operated as a broker dealer with an asset management division. Joe Aaron, a longtime hedge fund professional, found the structure suspicious and in 2003 warned a colleague to steer clear of the fund, saying "Why would a good businessman work his magic for pennies on the dollar?"

Early indications that Madoff may have been trouble emerged in 2007. The Madoff Family Foundation donated only $95,000 to charitable groups. This was a major drop from previous years. In 2006, the foundation donated $1,277,600.

Madoff ran into trouble, in 2008, when clients wanted to withdraw $7 billion from the firm and he had to come up with the cash.

**Marc** · 18-12-2008, 11:39 AM

Madoff: "I'm very close with the regulators."

How can someone lie and know that they will be caught out at some stage...

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMQTiD-FAlw

Cheers

Marc

**donna** · 18-12-2008, 12:38 PM

Amazing no banks down-under have been affected - maybe NAB? Or Macquarie Bank?

Geez the exposure of some of those institutions listed is just massive!

I actually don't get it at all. I need to read more as it seems totally surreal that Madoff could do what he did without getting caught. He gave himself up - he didn't actually get caught.

Cheers,

Donna

**Marc** · 19-12-2008, 10:44 AM

Warning about Bernard 'Made-off' as early as 1999

Watch the video he mentions interesting stuff about people warning USA SEC about Bernard 'Made-off' as early as the 90's

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1Z8TCegbqY

Cheers

Marc

**Marc** · 19-12-2008, 10:51 AM

Madoff's wife investigated in fraud probe

Hello all,

Maybe the wife is not clean after all?

=========================

Ruth Madoff, the 67-year-old wife of alleged fraud mastermind Bernard Madoff, is being investigated by US regulators over whether she helped maintain secret records used in a US$50 billion Ponzi scheme, a person familiar with the matter said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, combing through files at her husband's New York firm, found evidence she might have helped track payments, the person said, declining to be identified because the inquiry isn't public. Two people with knowledge of the probe said on December 14 that the agency is also examining why her name appears on related transactions.

"She's not charged with anything," said Ira Sorkin, a New York attorney at Dickstein Shapiro, which represents the couple. "The SEC has not sought to freeze her assets. She's under no bail conditions."

Authorities haven't accused Ruth Madoff of wrongdoing. US Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein, who is overseeing criminal proceedings against her husband, yesterday ordered the couple to surrender their passports. Bernard Madoff's wife and brother, Peter, were the only people willing to sign a US$10 million bond to secure his release. Ruth Madoff is seeking to hire her own lawyer, a person familiar with the matter said.

Read more...

Cheers

Marc

**Marc** · 19-12-2008, 11:00 AM

Madoff fund liquidated as sons deny involvement

Hello all,

How could the sons not know?

=======================

Officials last night began the process of liquidating any remaining assets in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, the company at the centre of an alleged $50 billion (£32.7 billion) fraud as the Wall Street broker's sons broke their silence to deny any involvement.

The Securities Investor Protection Corp (SIPC), a non-profit body which provides limited insurances to investors, has appointed Irving Picard as trustee to oversee the liquidation of Mr Madoff's brokerage firm to try and salvage any money for his former customers.

In a statement, Mr Picard said he would "work with SIPC to do what the law allows to ameliorate losses to customers".

It is unclear at this stage if any assets will be retrieved for the growing list of casualties from the alleged scam, which include Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Santander, owner of Abbey.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint filed against Mr Madoff states that the broker had between $200 million and $300 million that he was intending to distribute to friends, family and clients just before he was arrested.

While Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities was understood to have $17 billion in funds under management at the beginning of 2008, the SEC said these assets have all but disappeared and that the business was believed to be trading insolvent “for years”.

Last night, Mr Madoff's sons, Mark and Andrew, who worked at the family firm and are believed to have blown the whistle on their father, issued a statement, denying knowledge of his alleged activities.

A lawyer for the brothers said they were not involved in the asset management operations of the company, and that "they were shocked to learn of his actions".

Martin Flumenbaum, of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm, added: "The brothers were among the many victims of this scheme and will continue to cooperate fully with the US Attorney and the SEC in their investigations."

Mr Madoff reportedly ran the investment advisory arm of the business, through which the fraud is thought to have been perpetrated, from the 17th floor of his midtown Manhattan headquarters.

Market-making services and proprietary trading divisions were based on the 18th and 19th floors, and worked together, but there was little or no interaction with the 17th floor.

The SEC complaint filed against Mr Madoff said he kept the company's financial statements "under lock and key" and was "cryptic" about the investment advisory business.

Attention has also been turned on others who worked with Mr Madoff. A criminal investigation has been launched into Friehling & Horowitz, the auditor used by Mr Madoff.

Friehling & Horowitz is a three-person firm based in single office in a northern suburb of New York. It was responsible for auditing the estimated $17 billion of assets under Mr Madoff's management.

Source...

Cheers

Marc

**donna** · 19-12-2008, 02:10 PM

It would be truly remarkable if the sons did not know anything. I was reading about a North Korean chap 26yrs old who was born in a camp in North Korea and held captive, tortured etc along with his Dad and Mum (who was eventually killed). This chap is the first successful escapee known to escape the camps in North Korea - he is now living in South Korea.

He was held capture because he was the son of the brother (his Dad) who was the brother of a chap who tried to escape to South Korea. Umm luckily USA is not North Korea - otherwise the sons, wife, siblings would all be carted off to jail and tortured for the rest of their lives.

Cheers,

Donna

**Marc** · 21-12-2008, 10:02 AM

Peter Schiff on The Madoff Scandal Dec 17 2008

Hello all,

Video on the "Made-off"

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUv8rjBAdbk

Cheers

Marc

**eri** · 21-12-2008, 11:23 PM

another good explanation from the uk telegraph

Bernard Madoff `fraud': Betrayed by their best friend

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/bernard-madoff/3853113/Bernard-Madoff-fraud-Betrayed-by-their-best-friend.html

Bernard Madoff wooed the jet set, but few knew how much was at stake. James Quinn reports.

On Wednesday afternoon, an estate agent called Dorothy Levy took a call in her office in Palm Beach, the Floridian playground of the super-rich. A friend, a wealthy doctor, needed to sell his house and move into a rented condo, and quickly.
At around the same time, an elderly man left Manhattan's Pearl Street courthouse and walked briskly towards the waiting black 4x4. As he walked, head down, baseball cap on, he said nothing to the waiting reporters. This was Bernard Madoff, accused of masterminding what could yet prove to be the biggest fraud the world has ever seen. The doctor? Just one of the thousands of victims of this scandal.
Since the story broke on December 11, Levy has taken a number of calls from members of Palm Beach's small but select community, dominated by Jewish retirees who, in many cases, left their entire life savings in Madoff's seemingly capable hands.
The 70-year-old was a pillar of the community, living – when he was not in New York, or at his beachfront house in the Hamptons – in a wood-clad, tropically styled house on North Lake Way. Just two weeks ago, according to Bloomberg, he stopped off at the Everglades barber shop in the town for his "usual" – a $65 haircut, a $40 shave, a $50 pedicure and a $22 manicure.
Madoff, a self-made man who started his investment business with $5,000 earned from working as a lifeguard and installing refrigeration systems, lived a stone's throw away from the perfectly manicured lawns of the Palm Beach Country Club, the community's heart. The club has a joining fee of $300,000 and requires prospective members to provide a history of charitable giving. It was fertile terrain when hunting for clients. One such was Carl Shapiro, a textiles magnate whose son-in-law, Bob Jaffe, worked as a recruiter and gatekeeper for Madoff. When word of the accusations against Madoff broke, Jaffe called Shapiro and told him to turn on the news. He saw the man he had known for 48 years, and thought of as a son, leaving court after being indicted over what federal officials called "the world's largest Ponzi scheme". For Shapiro, who had invited Madoff to sit at the family table at his recent 95th birthday party, it was like "a knife in the heart" – not least because he had poured money into the fund in recent months, at Madoff's personal request.
Shapiro lost $400 million of his own money and $145 million from a charitable foundation. He is far from alone: the known number of casualties is growing by the day, cutting a scythe through the Jewish elite on both coasts. The impeccably connected Madoff looked after funds for Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is reported to have lost millions, and a children's charity set up by Steven Spielberg, which had more than half its assets with his firm. On the East Coast, the tycoon who owns the New York Mets baseball team was hit heavily, as were many charities, including the foundation set up by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, and Yeshiva University, America's oldest Jewish university, for which Madoff was treasurer of the board of trustees.
The list goes on: politicians, such as former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, whose family foundation lost money; European banks such as Santander and RBS; financiers such as Arpad Busson, the billionaire hedge-fund manager and philanthropist – and the fiancé of actress Uma Thurman – whose firm had $230 million under Madoff's management, and Nicola Horlick, the City "superwoman", whose Bramdean Alternatives had $31 million at stake. And spare a thought for the family of hedge fund boss Walter Noel, the
co-founder of the Fairfield Greenwich Group, which has a scarcely credible $7.5 billion in jeopardy: four of his five daughters are married to men who work for the firm.
There could even be more victims to come. The investors who have come forward – many of whom had no idea their money was being managed by Madoff due to the complex scheme he operated, by which certain funds fed into others – have so far claimed losses of $35 billion, still some $15 billion shy of the $50 billion total that Madoff is alleged to have mentioned to his two sons, Mark and Andrew. That alleged confession was triggered after investors whose fingers had been burnt by the financial crisis asked Madoff for their money back – they wanted $7 billion, but there was only $300 million in the bank. The system of sucking in new money to pay existing investors, which federal investigators allege had gone on since at least 2005, could not continue.
Madoff's group of companies is now under federal control, with investigators from the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the US attorney-general's office camped in the firm's headquarters, the so-called "Lipstick Building", poring through reams of paperwork. Guards are positioned at the entrance to stop angry investors. Others are understood to be watching over Madoff himself, as he bides his time until his next court date, under house arrest in his $7 million apartment on New York's Upper East Side. Having failed to convince his sons – or any of his friends – to co-sign bail papers with his brother Peter and wife Ruth, Madoff has been fitted with an electronic tag, and must not leave his two-floor apartment between 9pm and 7am.
In the meantime, the issue for investigators is how and whether such a crime could have been committed by just one man. "Speaking as a Jew on Christmas, I would be less shocked if Santa Claus showed up to my house than if Bernie Madoff pulled off this fraud alone,"
Ron Geffner, a partner at law firm Sadis & Goldberg told Fortune magazine. "It's hard to imagine that given the amount of assets that he managed that people would not have been aware. If nothing else, employees, no matter what floor they were on, would have known that somewhere within the firm money was being lost."
Another body that should have realised that something was amiss was America's main financial regulator, the SEC. Despite several tip-offs, it failed to detect that anything was wrong. Wall Street veteran Harry Markopolos, who first alerted the SEC to Madoff in 1999, was treated, as he put it this week, as "the boy who cried wolf".
Eighteen months ago, a firm called Aksia looked into Madoff's fund on behalf of its clients and did not like what it saw. It discovered that the main fund through which all the money was invested was being audited by an unknown accountancy firm, Friehling & Horowitz. Based in Rockland county, in upstate New York, its staff consisted of a 78-year-old retiree living in Florida, and an accountant and a secretary in a 13ft by 8ft office.
Aksia also questioned the nature of the operations on the 17th floor of the Lipstick Building, where staff at Madoff's share-dealing arm were not allowed to venture. Christopher Cox, the SEC's outgoing chairman, has said that a preliminary investigation into how and why his staff had not pursued Madoff was "deeply troubling" and admitted that he was "gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures" of the agency to investigate the allegations. Barack Obama has claimed that the US has been "asleep at the switch" when it comes to financial regulation.
Many of the victims, however, are not waiting for the government. Already the lawsuits are flying, as investors seek to recoup some of their losses. The New York Law School is suing Ezra Merkin, his Ascot Partners hedge fund and auditors BDO Seidman,over money it has lost; other accounting firms are likely to be drawn into the legal crossfire, with KPMG, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers among the auditors of funds that channelled money into Madoff's pot.
Whatever the outcome of such cases, the high-rollers of Palm Beach and elsewhere have been left reeling. For an awful lot of once very wealthy people, this is shaping up to be a Christmas to forget.

**Marc** · 22-12-2008, 08:10 AM

Obama on madoff scandal, rick warren

Maybe US will become a Socialist state?

News below...

CHICAGO -- The $50 billion Bernard Madoff scandal that has rocked New York took center stage here at Obama's press conference this morning, as the president-elect pointed to the massive Ponzi scheme as another indication that the nation's financial regulatory system must be overhauled.

He also responded to the controversy surrounding his selection of evangelical minister Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration on Jan. 20.

On the campaign trail this fall, as the crisis on Wall Street worsened, Obama spoke frequently about the need for what he called a 21st-century regulatory framework. He stressed that theme again today in announcing Mary Schapiro as his pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler to head of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Georgetown professor Daniel Tarullo to an open Federal Reserve Board seat.

“In the last few days, the alleged scandal at Madoff Investment Securities has reminded us yet again of how badly reform is needed when it comes to the rules and regulations that govern our markets,” Obama said. “Charities that invested in Madoff could end up losing savings on which millions depend -- a massive fraud that was made possible in part because the regulators who were assigned to oversee Wall Street dropped the ball. And if the financial crisis has taught us anything, it's that this failure of oversight and accountability doesn't just harm individuals involved ;it has the potential to devastate our entire economy.”

The president-elect said instituting a new regulatory framework would be "one of the top legislative priorities” of his administration, as suggested by the fact that he was announcing these appointments much earlier than past administrations have done. This regulatory-minded team would be tasked with putting in place “new common-sense rules of the road” to protect, consumers, investors, and the economy, as well as cracking down on what he called the “culture of greed and scheming” at the root of the current problems.

Obama said his team would be releasing a “very detailed plan” for how to go about revamping the system, and suggested it might be necessary to merge some agencies to improve and strengthen the regulatory system.

Schapiro, Gensler, and Tarullo would take office at a time when individuals and businesses are facing a severe credit crunch and a deepening recession, and also when many investors and ordinary Americans want to see better oversight of Wall Street to help avoid a repeat of the recent financial market meltdown regulators failed to prevent. The SEC has been criticized for failing to avert the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and for not acting on nearly a decade of credible allegations of wrongdoing by Madoff.

“Investor trust is the lifeblood of our financial markets,” Schapiro said during her brief remarks. “The only way to restore the trust that has been lost is through effective, thoughtful reform of our regulatory structure and the consistent and robust enforcement of our financial regulations and this will be my top priority.”

Outgoing Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox commended the choice of Schapiro: "I have worked closely with Mary for many years on a wide range of financial industry and market regulation efforts, including the creation of FINRA and the protection of senior investors, and she has always been a consummate professional,” the Cox statement read in part. “Her experience at both the CFTC and SEC will be invaluable in tackling the challenges of regulatory restructuring that the next Congress will face."

Source...

Cheers

Marc

**Marc** · 22-12-2008, 08:17 AM

Madoff's salesman

PALM BEACH, Fla. - Even in the rarefied world of high society in Palm Beach, Robert M. Jaffe cut quite the figure. With his impeccably coiffed hair, a golf game to envy, and a $17 million waterfront mansion, he was a man to be seen.

He was also the man to see, if you wanted in on a sure thing - Bernard L. Madoff's investment fund.

Jaffe moved among the rich and richer in Palm Beach and Boston, finding suitable clients, among the many who clamored to get a piece of Madoff's irresistible, too-good-to-be-true investment returns.

But now the 64-year-old Newton native finds himself at the center of one of the biggest scandals to rock the financial world, which has wiped out billions of dollars from an A-list of the powerful and famous, as well as his closest friends, family - and himself.

As investigators unravel the $50 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly masterminded by Madoff, Jaffe has become the subject of intense scrutiny as the New York money manager's debonair middleman. Unlike Madoff, who was aloof and rarely attended parties, Jaffe relished his access to wealthy friends and investors at country clubs and charity galas.

"Jaffe had access to Madoff, and that made him a superstar. He was bigger than life," said Herb Gray, a Boston native with a home in Palm Beach. He is a close friend of Robert I. Lappin, a Swampscott resident whose private family foundation financed trips to Israel for Jewish youth but was forced to shut down this month after losing all of its estimated $8 million to Madoff.

As Madoff's financial empire has crumbled, so has Jaffe's place at the pinnacle of Palm Beach's social life. At the ritzy Mar-a-Lago club, an angry investor who lost millions with Madoff confronted Jaffe at a party last Saturday. Massachusetts Secretary of State has since subpoenaed Jaffe related to the scheme. And his son's engagement party, which was supposed to be held at the exclusive Palm Beach Country Club last night, was abruptly canceled.

"He's in a terrible position. It's a tragedy," said Lawrence Sperber, a Boston lawyer who has a home in Palm Beach and has known Jaffe for more than 40 years and has friends who have lost millions of dollars. "Was he out selling Madoff? Yes. Did he use his contacts to sell the product? Yes. But he's as much a victim. I don't think he had any idea. And he's messed up his relationship with the rest of the world."

As vice president of Cohmad Securities Corp., a company set up primarily to bring in clients for Madoff, Jaffe offered coveted access to the legendary New York firm. Jaffe used to keep a small office on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, but the MBA dropout functioned more as a symbol of the extraordinary wealth and status Madoff clients could achieve.

Read more...

Cheers

marc

**muppet** · 22-12-2008, 08:34 AM

FBI Agents Shifted From Terror Work to Madoff, Subprime Probes

By Patricia Hurtado
Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The FBI has been forced to shift agents from terror and other crime work to Wall Street investigations including the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scandal, said David Cardona, head of the New York office’s criminal division.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has had to engage in “triage” in responding to successive frauds involving subprime mortgages, auction-rate securities and Madoff, who prosecutors said confessed this month to bilking investors out of $50 billion, Cardona said in an interview yesterday.
“We have to work those cases which we think pose the greatest threat,” he said. “In this case, it’s a threat to the financial system and Wall Street. It’s the same with mortgage fraud. I’m ramping these squads up.”
Special Agent Rachel Rojas, who once worked on tracing terrorist financing and al-Qaeda, now oversees 15 agents investigating mortgage fraud, said Cardona, a career agent with 23 years at the bureau who once worked as a New York state accountant. He declined to say how many other agents he has reassigned from anti-terror work to financial crimes.
Rojas heads one of two such mortgage-fraud squads that work with federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and Manhattan and other federal agencies, Cardona said. The U.S. Justice Department has created more than 40 mortgage-fraud task forces around the country this year.
To address the rise in criminal investigations related to the subprime crisis and other financial crimes, his office has become more selective on the kinds of cases they’ll take on, Cardona said. They do handle multimillion dollar fraud cases, while referring smaller cases to state prosecutors or to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Cardona said.
Big Case Skipped
Even some big cases are left to others now. The FBI didn’t get involved in the investigation of Marc Dreier, a New York lawyer charged Dec. 8 with defrauding hedge funds out of more than $100 million. The Dreier case is being handled by investigators in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.
To save agents time, the New York office has also established Web sites and telephone hotlines for anonymous e-mail complaints and tips about mortgage fraud and the Madoff case, Cardona said.
Since he arrived from Miami in May, 2007, Cardona, 52, has overseen 400 agents who handle criminal cases. The New York office covers New York City, Long Island, Westchester and the five counties north of New York City. In addition to the main office, located just north of Wall Street, Cardona oversees five smaller satellite bureaus in Queens, White Plains, Long Island, John F. Kennedy International Airport and Goshen, New York.
FBI’s $6.8 Billion Budget
Under Cardona, the FBI’s New York office has also forged new relationships with regulators and other federal agencies as a means of stretching manpower, he said. His agents are working with the Federal Housing Administration on mortgage fraud.
“We’re working to marry our efforts,” he said. “There is tons of stuff out there,” Cardona said. “But we don’t have the resources to chase every collapsed hedge fund or collapsed financial institution,” Cardona said. “We don’t have the expertise or the manpower,” he said.
According to FBI statistics, the bureau’s budget in fiscal year 2008 was about $6.8 billion. There is no allocation for greater funding in the 2009 budget, he said.
“Realistically, in the era of limited resources, the FBI in New York will strive to use the necessary resources to address the criminal activities we feel are the most important,” he said.
Criminal conduct involves a higher standard of proof to secure a conviction than the civil allegations the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may file against a financial institution, so it’s harder to make cases, Cardona said.
‘Market Dynamic’
He cites the bank failure at Washington Mutual -- the largest in U.S. history -- as an example of obstacles the FBI faces in showing if there was criminal wrongdoing.
“You can scratch your head and say, ‘Was there criminality that happened there?’” he said. “How can that collapse? Was that mismanagement? My standard is higher than that. I have to show criminal intent. Sometimes you see a bank failure or a hedge fund collapse, and I have to see is that just a market dynamic or is something else going on.”
The fall in the stock market this year didn’t create the recent surge in financial crimes, Cardona said.
“Mortgage fraud was perpetrated in good times, but no one saw it,” Cardona said. “In bad times, as we are in now, you see the manifestation of the crime problem. It was there, but like the tide going out, you just didn’t see until the margin calls started coming in.”
Madoff, Bear Stearns
The workload of Cardona’s agents this week ran the gamut from an indictment in gangland slayings to working with the SEC to Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Cardona declined to discuss any details of the Madoff case.
Under Cardona, the office had some recent high-profile white-collar prosecutions this year: in June the FBI teamed up with the SEC and prosecutors in the office of Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell to bring indictments against two former Bear Stearns Cos. hedge fund managers in the first prosecution stemming from a U.S. government probe of last year’s mortgage market collapse.
In September, the same group brought indictments in a second case, against two former Credit Suisse traders accused of fraudulently selling corporate clients more than $1 billion of auction-rate securities linked to subprime mortgages. The defendants in both cases have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to be tried next year.
While counterterrorism remains a top priority for the office since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Cardona said he’s also cognizant of the threat white-collar fraud poses to the U.S. economy.
No. 1: Terror
“In New York, No. 1, that is terror but also my area of responsibility is any crime that undermines the confidence in our financial-services industry.” He said. “To me that’s another top threat.”
“All law enforcement will tell you they’d like more resources,” he said. “We’d like to take some problems and crimes out completely. But there are a lot of cases out there I’d like to spend more time on, but we have to hit the bigger targets. We probably will never have enough resources to address the problems as most of us would like to.”

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLRvQBfKvPeM&refer=home

**Marc** · 22-12-2008, 04:38 PM

Madoff exuded confidence right up to the end

Yesh... I think if Madoff was a Chinese living in China when this scam came out he would be walked into a stadium and shot like they do for common criminals.

I doubt he will ever go to prison or the same type of prison we would be sent to for a criminal activity. Maybe someone will put a "hit" out for the guy.

News...

Just days before his downfall in an alleged fraud that may end up costing investors US$50 billion, Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff circulated a flyer promoting the virtues of his service to clients.

"Customers know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing and high ethical standards that has always been the firm's hallmark," Madoff proclaimed in a brochure designed to drum up more business.

The brochure called attention to the high-tech trading side of his business that was supposedly honestly run and legitimate, but it also offers a glimpse of why the Securities and Exchange Commission was unable to stop Madoff in his tracks despite repeated warnings.

As financial markets have grown increasingly complicated - which was the case with this part of Madoff's operation - the SEC has struggled to keep up with the changes.

The circumstance of this relatively tiny bureaucracy - 3,567 employees including clerical workers - is that of an agency overwhelmed.

Read more...

Cheers

Marc

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