Madoff
razib | February 25, 2010Citing shame, danger, one Madoff seeks name change:
Stephanie Madoff, who is married to Madoff's son Mark, has asked New York Supreme Court for permission to change her last name to Morgan and also, according to local media reports, made similar requests for her two young children.
razib | November 13, 2009Two Are Charged With Helping Madoff Falsify Records:
Two computer programmers who worked for Bernard L. Madoff's brokerage firm were arrested on Friday on criminal charges of helping perpetuate his long-running Ponzi scheme.
The two men -- Jerome O'Hara of Malvern, N.Y., and George Perez of East Brunswick, N.J. -- were also sued by securities regulators, who said they had helped keep the Madoff fraud running for more than 15 years and took "hush money" to keep it secret.
The criminal and civil complaints accuse the men of creating and maintaining the software that enabled Mr. Madoff to…
razib | October 31, 2009In a piece that outlines SEC follies:
In fact, Mr. Madoff said in the jailhouse interview that, on two occasions, he was certain it was only a matter of days or even hours before he would be caught. The first time, in 2004, he assumed the investigators would check his clearinghouse account. He said he was "astonished" that they did not, and theorized that they might have decided against doing so because of his stature in the industry.
"I'm very proud of the role I played in the industry," he said. "Of course I destroyed that now."
In Mr. Madoff's second close call in 2006, investigators…
razib | October 25, 2009Lawyer: Death complicates Madoff investment case:
The death of Jeffry Picower, accused of profiting more than $7 billion from the investment schemes of his longtime friend Bernard Madoff, will make it more difficult for suing investors to recoup their money, attorneys said.
...
But the trustee's lawyer said Picower's claims that he was a victim "ring hollow" because he withdrew more of other investors' money than anyone else during three decades and should have noticed signs of fraud.
According to the lawyers, Picower's accounts were "riddled with blatant and obvious fraud," and he should…
razib | August 11, 2009'It Was All Fake,' Madoff Aide Tells Court:
Frank DiPascali was an 18-year-old "kid from Queens" with a high school education when he landed a job with a rising star on Wall Street named Bernard L. Madoff.
...
"No purchases or sales of securities were actually taking place in their accounts," Mr. DiPascali said. "It was all fake. It was all fictitious. It was wrong, and I knew it was wrong at the time."
He said he used data from the Internet to create fake trade blotters, sent out fraudulent account statements to clients and carried out wire transfers between Mr. Madoff's London and New York…
razib | March 26, 2009New York has a very long piece, Monster Mensch, which profiles Bernie & J. Ezra Merkin. Psychoanalysis can get kind of old, the profile is more interesting in terms of the light it sheds on other figures in Bernie's world.
razib | March 10, 2009Vanity Fair has a long profile of Walter Noel's clan up right now. Noel, if you don't know, is the head of Fairfield Greenwich, which funneled billions into Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme. One of Noel's daughters has this precious quote:
Lawyers for aggrieved clients are hell-bent on finding and seizing whatever's left of the Noels' fortune. "I've been poor before. I can be poor again," Marisa said to a friend.
This is what she is referring to:
As they grew up, her daughters helped her with it. The eldest four--Corina, Lisina, Ariane, and Alix--went to public and private schools. They spent…