Holy mole: a $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme run by Bernard L. Madoff. That's an astounding amount of money if true.
Update: This is now big news, of course. For an interesting read of someone who has been pursuing this fraud since 1999 see The World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud by Harry Markopolos. h/t nakedshorts.
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I find the epic Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff morbidly fascinating. He managed to lose 50 billion dollars, which can't be easy:
A busy stock-trading operation occupied the 19th floor, and the computers and paperwork of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities filled the 18th floor.
But the 17th…
Woman Tells of Affair With Madoff in New Book:
Hadassah, the Jewish volunteer organization, knew it had invested $40 million with Bernard L. Madoff by the late 1990s. It also knew it had taken more than $130 million from its Madoff accounts and still had millions on the books when the vast Ponzi…
Turns out that the man who waged a one-man crusade against Bernard Madoff, Harry Markopolos, wants to be left alone. But here's the interesting point:
"Why would people think I feel good about this?" the past president of the Boston Security Analysts Society was quoted as telling the Boston Globe…
Naturally, since this friday was the first time that the SB server has really been down since I start blogging (planned downtime, as it happens, for a major system upgrade), there
was spectacularly bad math in the local news here in NYC friday afternoon.
I'm not sure how long this has been the…
Seems like shades of Richard Whitney at the NYSE in the 30's.
Jeff
With no brother to eventually pay out restitution, I'm guessing though.
As you may have heard, Madoff is now under house arrest, and has been obliged to sign over some assets (eg, property in the Hamptons). As a lawyer remarked earlier this week, "$50 billion didn't just go up in smoke." Then again, the value of a lot of CDOs pretty much went up in smoke--considerably more than $50 billion worth, as a matter of fact.