Crimes Of The Century Bernie Madoff

ABOUT THE BOOK In the fall of 2008, at the zenith of the American financial crisis, multiple Wall Street firms posted losses reaching into the hundreds of millions. These losses represented the beginning of an unprecedented disaster. In December of 2008, CNN estimated that Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was responsible for $50 billion. Widely touted as the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, Bernard “Bernie” Madoff lured wealthy investors with promises of high returns only to siphon away funds to finance his own lavish lifestyle. He would then replenish his coffers by recruiting more unsuspecting clients. After decades of deception, the question remains: How did Madoff get away with it for so long? MEET THE AUTHOR Andrew Ulloa is an attorney who lives and practices in San Jose, California. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Madoff’s obsession with access extended beyond recruiting clients. The Wall Street Journal documented Madoff’s entrée into the world of regulatory agencies. Madoff kept close ties with the leading securities industry organization, Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (“SIFMA”), where his brother Peter served on the board of directors. Additionally, Madoff held close relationships with employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). His nephew was a SEC lawyer and Madoff considered past SEC Chairpersons and Commissioners to be friends. It seemed that he had friends everywhere. What is fascinating about Madoff is the ability he had to manipulate so many smart, wealthy, connected people. Even days before Madoff’s arrest, there were those still clamoring to invest with him. Madoff had crafted a sustainable self-perpetuating scheme. Yet, the one factor Madoff could not anticipate was the subprime mortgage crisis and the resulting housing market crash. The economy was shaken, and investors wanted to be as liquid as possible. In the fall of 2008, they began requesting cash withdrawals from Madoff. This was the end of the line. There was no way Madoff could redeem over $7 billion in requests. According to Bloomberg News, Madoff only had $200 million left to disperse. With his options limited, he confessed to his family and surrendered to authorities on December 11, 2008. Buy a copy to continue reading!

In December 2008, amidst a world gripped by financial crisis, Bernard Madoff, a respected fund manager, and former chairman of Nasdaq, was arrested by the Fbi for reportedly bilking thousands of trusting investors out of $50 billion. In the first comprehensive account of this financial mastermind's epic Ponzi scheme, Catastrophe exposes the real story behind Madoff's upstanding facade-his confession, his family's involvement, and his unlikely rise and incredible crash. The book defines and explains the whole diabolical debacle, including how he seduced and persuaded sophisticated investors, how he evaded Sec watchdogs, and how his far-reaching crime pervaded the world. With first-hand victim accounts lending a human-interest viewpoint, the book peels back Madoff's persona layer by layer, revealing how he developed his elaborate deceit and how and why he targeted and scammed the world of Jewish philanthropy. Complete with the famous whistle-blower letter to the Sec, the now unavailable-to-the-public Madoff company mission statement, Sec filings, and a list of victims-from household names to housewives-Catastrophe offers a complete look at the white-collar crime of the century that will leave readers both astounded and in disbelief. Book jacket.

A sociological deconstruction of the public response to Bernie Madoff and his crimes. Bernie Madoff’s arrest could not have come at a more darkly poetic moment. Economic upheaval had plunged America into a horrid recession. Then, on December 11, 2008, Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme came to light. A father turned in by his sons; a son who took his own life; another son dying and estranged from his father; a woman at the center of a storm—Madoff’s story was a media magnet, voraciously consumed by a justice-seeking public. Bernie Madoff and the Crisis goes beyond purely investigative accounts to examine how and why Madoff became the epicenter of public fury and titillation. Rooting her argument in critical sociology, Colleen P. Eren analyzes media coverage of this landmark case alongside original interviews with dozens of journalists and editors involved in the reportage, the SEC Director of Public Affairs, and Bernie Madoff himself. Turning the mirror back onto society, Eren locates Madoff within a broader reckoning about free market capitalism. She argues that our ideological and cultural tendencies to attribute blame to individuals—be they regulators, victims, or “monsters” like Madoff—distracts us from more systemic critiques. Bernie Madoff and the Crisis offers fresh insight into the 2008 crisis, whether we have come to terms with it, and what we have yet to gain from the case of the century. Praise for Bernie Madoff and the Crisis “Eren crafts a narrative of Bernie Madoff’s crimes as a sweeping comment on our society at large, which created and upheld the kill-or-be-killed finance ethos, and thereby produced the twenty-first century version of a Wall Street serial killer.” —Erin Arvedlund, author of Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff “There is important primary data here and a creative analysis. Eren makes a notable contribution to the literature on financial crime, as well as our understanding of the role that the Madoff case played during an unfolding financial crisis.” —Kitty Calavita, University of California, Irvine, author of Big Money Crime “Eren uses massive amounts of media commentary and interviews—with journalists and Madoff himself—to reveal salient points about the contemporary economy, society, and its demonology. An easy read, and an informative one as we continue to sift through the ashes of the financial crisis and our societal stance on white collar crime.” —Michael Levi, Cardiff University and author of The Phantom Capitalists and Regulating Fraud

Bernard Madoff's financial fraud was global, an enormous amount of money was involved, and thousands of people and hundreds of institutions were swindled. Madoff's con game was a Ponzi scheme—an investment that pays returns to early investors from money acquired from subsequent investors.This case study of the Madoff scheme looks at the effects of his crimes on the victims. Elements from a theoretical framework put forward by Erving Goffman provide a perspective for understanding the development and the aftermath of Madoff's con. For example, as Goffman would have put it, Madoff's marks were not cooled out. Many did not accept the fact that they were victims of a con game and publicly clamored for sympathy, restitution, and for public officials to share their perspective.Inside men, ropers, outside men, and victims are at the core of con games. Lionel S. Lewis emphasizes that it is important to understand a con game's characteristics so as to grasp how it operates. The Madoff fraud includes elements of a variety of con games. For a comprehensive study of this economic crime, the case study must be seen as part of the broader social system. Considerably more is known about the dynamics of con games than about Ponzi schemes, and this fact frames this book's approach. To better understand what Madoff did, who was central in keeping his scheme alive, whom he defrauded, and how they reacted, this work is as invaluable as it is illuminating.

This is the first detailed study of how Bernard L. Madoff and his accomplices perpetrated a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions—what has been referred to as the "con of the century." In December 2008, Bernard L. Madoff was arrested for perpetrating a protracted Ponzi scheme of inconceivably huge proportions that defrauded clients of his securities company of nearly $20 billion—and was consequently sentenced to 150 years in jail. How did Madoff pull this off for years, even returning some or all of clients' money when they asked, while in actuality was financing the lavish lifestyles of himself, his family, and his accomplices with the stolen funds? And why didn't anyone in the highly regulated investment industry catch on sooner? Bernard Madoff and His Accomplices: Anatomy of a Con examines Bernard L. Madoff's unprecedented confidence game (con game), drawing back the curtain on what actually went on at his investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, and exposing the day-to-day activities of his accomplices that enabled the elaborate con to succeed for as long as it did. Through the examination of court testimony and other court documents, the mechanics of the con game become clear, elucidating how Madoff's friends and employees hustled money from investors; the methods by which false records, monthly statements to investors, and other documents were manufactured and mass-produced; and how a multitude of felonies and the highest levels of fraud became everyday practices.

After the news broke of Bernie Madoff's arrest on December 11, 2008, the facts were hard to grasp. Madoff claimed to have stolen fifty billion dollars; the sum seemed impossibly large. But of course it wasn't impossible. And that was only the beginning of the story. As chief investigative correspondent for ABC News, Brian Ross has been on the front lines of the Madoff scandal since the beginning. Throughout the course of his investigation, he and his team have achieved unequaled access to the investigators working to unravel Madoff's fraud, and have succeeded in cultivating sources deep within the walls of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities that no other journalist has reached.The result is an unparalleled, fly-on-the-wall view of a life of corrupted luxury and outrageous lies.

On the 29th of June, 2008, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. His crime was running the biggest-ever fraudulent scheme in US history, and probably in the history of the world. The prosecutors estimated that Madoff had committed a fraud worth $64.8 billion. Madoff was a well-respected financier, and this is why investors believed him when he promised consistent profits in return of their savings. Furthermore, he continued to fool his investors, more than 4,800 clients, for a period of over a decade. So, who was Bernie Madoff? What is a Ponzi scheme? How did Bernie manage to run this fraudulent scheme for such a long time? How was he caught? Find out all about this and much more right here in this book.

A criminological investigation into the social, cultural, political & economic conditions that led to the 2008 financial collapse.