posted
If he tries to pay them back making license plates at seventeen cents an hour, he really will be in jail for a skillion years.
I know a skillion isn't a real number. They're going to have to invent a new number to describe how long it will take him to work to pay everyone back...
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I don't understand...if the people have no money left, what were they living off before when they thought they were investing their money? Since HE was living off their money.
Posts: 930 | Registered: Dec 2006
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quote:150 years, but his wife gets to keep 2 million. Smells like bull to me.
Sometimes you just gotta take what you can get. Especially when you're dealing with, cliched though the term is, a master criminal like Madoff. He's gonna have contingencies, and likely surround himself with folks who will have contingencies.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
It looks like Ruth Madoff may have had some money that didn't come from her husband, and that's what she's left with. She inherited a little over two million from her parents.
quote: The order left her with $2.5 million that couldn't be tied to the fraud.
Unless she's convicted as well, I think that's fair. She has to leave her house and probably the city, because buying another will take most of the money she has left. She's in her seventies, which is too old, really, to work and save but not so old that she won't live for years more. I don't begrudge her that bit.
Besides, I bet she gets sued.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Presumably some people who had liquidated their Madoff assets before Madoff couldn't keep it going any longer profited excessively. I haven't heard any stories about them. Have you guys?
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Yes. The investigation as to who else knew what and who should return what is only just beginning.
What about when those early investors are charities? A lot of charities got screwed, but some benefited. However, the money's long gone (this has been going on for twenty years).
The repercussions are far from over.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Well, he was just Bernie, but still. I hear the name and can't help thinking of my bunny. (Which is sadly not with me anymore, but still)
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Tara: I don't understand...if the people have no money left, what were they living off before when they thought they were investing their money? Since HE was living off their money.
Define "live."
I suppose if you invested, say, 50 million dollars out of your sum total assets of, say, 55 million, being left with just that 5 million, including your house, cars, other stuff, plus some other investments, would feel like a major blow. It wouldn't really matter from that perspective that you still have 5 million dollars- you just "lost it all" as in 91% of your wealth. If anybody really did lose *everything* then I can't say as I have the most sympathy possible for them... they did after all at least think they were going to invest their money in a hedge fund. That, and they would still remain in the top 1% in terms of wealth.
Besides, wasn't Madoff's minimum investment a ridiculously high number? Like 5 million dollars? That's what I seem to remember from the Planet Money on NPR podcast. If you have 5 million to dump into a hedge fund, I'll go out on a long limb here and suggest that you are not going to be pauperized by this loss. Still totally wrong, but not a Greek tragedy.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: Well, he was just Bernie, but still. I hear the name and can't help thinking of my bunny. (Which is sadly not with me anymore, but still)
quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: Well, he was just Bernie, but still. I hear the name and can't help thinking of my bunny. (Which is sadly not with me anymore, but still)
Oh... was it all the stress that did it?
Too soon?
Possibly... It has only been since October...
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: Well, he was just Bernie, but still. I hear the name and can't help thinking of my bunny. (Which is sadly not with me anymore, but still)
A fool and his bunny are soon parted.
Posts: 1794 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: If you have 5 million to dump into a hedge fund, I'll go out on a long limb here and suggest that you are not going to be pauperized by this loss.
Many organizations (and individuals) who invested with Madoff had to really stretch to make his minimum (not sure what it was, but you're in the right ballpark). Pooled funds with friends or relatives, invested literally ALL their assets, including borrowing money against homes.
Not "pauperized"? Dream on.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: If you have 5 million to dump into a hedge fund, I'll go out on a long limb here and suggest that you are not going to be pauperized by this loss.
Many organizations (and individuals) who invested with Madoff had to really stretch to make his minimum (not sure what it was, but you're in the right ballpark). Pooled funds with friends or relatives, invested literally ALL their assets, including borrowing money against homes.
Not "pauperized"? Dream on.
(it's a real word, so look it up and don't "quote" me )
Well, what was his minimum? And really, what were these people doing investing all their money in a hedge fund? Do you think that's not greedy, or stupid? In the case that people actually took out loans to invest with him, I have no sympathy. That's greed, and it's stupid.
Perhaps some people *have* been pauperized by this- but then if that's the case, I can't help but hold them partly responsible. I hope they get their money returned to them. Ideally, everybody just gets their money back- but since some of it will inevitably be gone, I'd just want the courts to make sure the dumbest *and* the poorest get theirs first. Nobody deserves to be stolen from, whatever the case.
But what can you really say to these people who invested more than they even really owned? It was known in the financial community, literally for *years* that Madoff was a huckster. He was reported to the FCC multiple times (they ignored the reports, because they didn't have the expertise to recognize the scam) the major investment firms wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole, and his prospectus promised returns that were pretty much impossible if the whole thing wasn't a scam. If you're going to go into hock to invest a ridiculous figure in one thing, do you not ask around about this guy? I mean really, get a second opinion? Read about him on the internet even? I mean, at one point the guy was claiming to trade more stock than was actually in existence. I'm not pretending I would have been able to spot the scam if I had been in that situation, but I damn well wouldn't have given him 5 million dollars if that's all the money I had in the world.
And I wasn't saying it's not a real word. Just perhaps not the best choice here.
quote: If you're going to go into hock to invest a ridiculous figure in one thing, do you not ask around about this guy? I mean really, get a second opinion?
And if all your peers enthusiastically praise him, and have been investing with him successfully for 5, 10, 15 years?
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The problem is that for a lot of people, if you asked around, Madoff was the answer that you got. It isn't like he was working out of the trunk of his car across the railroad tracks.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:He was reported to the FCC multiple times (they ignored the reports, because they didn't have the expertise to recognize the scam) the major investment firms wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole...
Wait, so Madoff was good enough to fool the FCC, but if he fools John Doe Investor kicking his savings back into Madoff's schemes, well, really Do should've known better?
That doesn't make sense.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
I liked Daily Show's take on it, he was given a choise of 120 years in prison without parole OR all charges dropped but he has to WALK home without any money of bodyguards from the courtroom.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Blame the victim is always a fun game.
I knew you'd say that. These aren't people walking down dark alleys. It's still wrong, but I don't wring my hands over it. Well, I suppose in the grand sense, I am disappointed in the greed that all parties exhibit in this case. I don't even have any money, and I know that it's impossible to beat the market as Madoff claimed to be doing all those years, and even if it *is* possible, I wouldn't trust anyone who claimed to be doing it.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:He was reported to the FCC multiple times (they ignored the reports, because they didn't have the expertise to recognize the scam) the major investment firms wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole...
Wait, so Madoff was good enough to fool the FCC, but if he fools John Doe Investor kicking his savings back into Madoff's schemes, well, really Do should've known better?
That doesn't make sense.
It does make sense, if you know what the FCC was actually doing. I said they ignored the reports. They took NO action, because that isn't what they're trained to do. To be clear about what I meant, I mean to say that they ignored the reports *because* they don't have any expertise in recognizing scams, so it's not that they ignored the reports because they didn't see anything wrong, but that they didn't even bother to look at what the reports were telling them. They did no investigating at all until this past year.
I base this on reports I listened to from NPR so I'm not an expert, but in this situation the FCC received the complaints and never acted upon any of them- according to what I have heard, and read. Even when an investigation was opened a decade ago, it was closed without the FCC ever actually looking into Madoff's business. He was never investigated. That, and the FCC was generally not activist when it came to financial scams, they operated under the assumption that everyone was playing by the rules, so anything they actually caught was going to be an accidental offense. The FCC is comprised of lawyers, not finance experts per se, and they mostly audit only the paperwork they actually receive from companies- they don't often check to see if anyone is lying. Since Madoff's was a hedge fund, he was exempt even from disclosing to the FCC the method of his investments, iirc. So the FCC had nothing to look at- and they ignored third parties who did report suspicions.
So the attitude that the FCC should be on top of this helped him to float the whole scam for longer, but people knew, and reported, a long time ago that he was running a scam. And aside from that, *anyone* who promises as he did in his prospectus to deliver a steady return above the market is, almost certainly, running a scam. The fact that he actually made good on those returns consistently was only more incriminating. I'm not even saying that Joe Investor should have been an expert on this, but I am saying that when you invest 5 million dollars in one thing *especially* if it's all you have, you ought to make yourself an expert on it first. It's stupid. Again wrong, horribly, horribly wrong, but also really stupid. Playing in traffic stupid.
quote: The problem is that for a lot of people, if you asked around, Madoff was the answer that you got. It isn't like he was working out of the trunk of his car across the railroad tracks.
That's very true. To be honest I've been puzzling over exactly where the confidence scam ended and individual investor incompetence began. Looking at the whole picture, it's easy to neglect the fact that he preyed on a specific community, mainly upper class Jews, who would have trusted their friends over any fictive financial advisors I can conjure up. I don't know the extent of this part of the story, and I'm not a member of that community, so I can only really base my judgment on what I might do, and what my common sense tells me. There's nobody in my social network like this, that I know of, so I am interested in how deep that aspect of this was- I think it was a linchpin in this whole scheme.
Now, I agree that someone *should* have been in a position to recognize the obvious and investigate Madoff officially, but during the span of his scam there was no regulatory agency in a position to investigate him. No one was in charge of checking to see what he was doing with 50 billion dollars. Now I suppose all I'm trying to say is that given all that, which any investor could find out just by going to a financial adviser and asking about this kind of investment, it was very unwise of some of these people to sink all their money, indeed more money than they actually had, if The Rabbit is correct, into this business.
quote: If you're going to go into hock to invest a ridiculous figure in one thing, do you not ask around about this guy? I mean really, get a second opinion?
And if all your peers enthusiastically praise him, and have been investing with him successfully for 5, 10, 15 years?
If we're just talking about me, and all the money I had in the world? Hell yes. A thousand times yes. For me, that's an easy one. But then, I don't have any money anyway, and I hem and haw about buying new underpants.
...maybe I've said too much.
Let me see if I can track down the source I had on that- I listen and erase, but I believe it was Planet Money that carried the particular story I'm referencing.
quote:It does make sense, if you know what the FCC was actually doing. I said they ignored the reports. They took NO action, because that isn't what they're trained to do. To be clear about what I meant, I mean to say that they ignored the reports *because* they don't have any expertise in recognizing scams, so it's not that they ignored the reports because they didn't see anything wrong, but that they didn't even bother to look at what the reports were telling them. They did no investigating at all until this past year.
It doesn't make sense, the way you're framing your 'they should've known better' is what I meant, is all. I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to say, "The SEC doesn't have anything on him, he can't be that bad."
They should do more research than that, certainly, but it's not blind wallowing in ignorance either. (And how did we get to saying FCC instead of SEC, anyway? I just noticed that.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Haha, Freudian slip I suppose, I realize there's a difference, but they sound almost exactly the same coming out of my mouth, so my brain doesn't differentiate.
Well, my point was that it isn't difficult to at least ascertain the fact that someone like Madoff, that businesses like his, are inherently insulated from external regulation, and thus one should never, under any circumstances, do what these people did with their money. Again, I'm open to your opinion about where the line between being swindled and screwing yourself is- but I think the blindness of greed and wishful thinking was to blame in a lot of these cases.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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