Bernard cheated investors

How Bernard Madoff cheated investors“Madoff with ya money.” Of all the articles covering the scandal, that title from the Financial Times sums it up best. The opening of the piece is pretty good too: Nothing stupefies like money. Even the savviest investors tend to look the other way when extraordinary returns are being made.it is the fuel behind speculative bubbles and the magic behind all financial scams


. No one, it seems, has exploited this as blatantly in recent times as Wall Street bigwig Bernard Madoff, a former Nasdaq chairman arrested this week for allegedly running the biggest dollar Ponzi scheme of all time. The scale of the fraud is staggering. Tens of billions have been lost – perhaps as much as $50 billion over many years. Wealthy families, numerous charities, and even college trusts have been all but wiped out.


The Palm Beach Country Club, where Madoff recruited many of his victims – er, investors – is said to be in a panic. Perhaps the largest private victim is Carl Shapiro and family, who had known Madoff for 50 years and had $545 million invested. A number of large players were caught in the scam too. Britain’s HSBC Bank may have lost as much as $1 billion. Banco Santander had more than $3 billion in exposure through its money management arm.

Even the State of Massachusetts had skin in the game... the list goes on and on. The Biggest Red Flag There were plenty of red flags, but Madoff’s reputation gave him a pass with investigators and regulators alike. As far back as 1999, forensic whistleblowers had reported Madoff to the SEC as a fraud. Barrons ran an article in 2001 openly wondering how Madoff did it when no one else could. In hindsight there were many small things... skeptics had been asking questions for years, but they were always waved off.