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Secrets, Lies and Bernie Madoff

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Secrets, Lies and Bernie Madoff

It seems like they all start the same – with Secrets and Lies. With secrets and all the don’t tell anyone because it is exclusive talk - that’s the stuff that makes soap operas, scandals and the greatest ponzi schemes.
Everyone likes feeling like they have a great opportunity that not everyone gets to have and that it is exclusive, especially when it feeds their financial greed. Those are the ingredients that helped Bernie Madoff build the biggest Ponzi investment scheme in history. Madoff maintains that he never meant for it to be anything more than him investing for close friends and family however the secrecy and not accepting just anyone are part of what made so many people want to be a part, thereby becoming one of the best marketing tactics ever.

The first question I wanted to know was who is this man that earned the respect of some of the biggest names on Wall Street, the trust of friends, family and strangers and where did he come from? • Start of firm senior in college The firm that Madoff started in 1960 with the $5,000 he saved was a trading business that specialized in the trading of penny stocks – Continued to earn money as a life guard and landscaper until his business took off • Bernard Madoff is a former financier, American hedge-fund investment manager, chairman of the NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) stock exchange, and chairman of the firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. He is the main conspirator of the history’s largest investor fraud committed by a single person.

As the investor pool grew to an estimated well over 8000 investors some of the major players – that probably had hundreds or thousands of sub- investors themselves were:

• The Fairfield Greenwich Group - Jeffrey Tucker, general partner, began

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