...Case 8: The Fraud of the Century: The Case of Bernard Madoff Introduction Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff is a former American businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor, and the former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market. He is very successful in his early life. Madoff founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960 by buying and selling over-the- counter stocks that were not listed on the NYSE. As he became more successful, he moved the company’s headquarters from Wall Street to the famous “Lipstick Building” on Third Avenue. After that, Madoff started to help his investors to manage their money. He used Ponzi scheme to cheat his clients by promising of consistent returns of 10 to 12 percent. Base on his trustworthy and reputation, he success to find billions of dollars from hundreds of investors. Basically, Madoff just took money from new investors and uses it to pay off the old investors. Why he can make it because lots of investors lack financial knowledge. Also they won’t doubt about what the investment is as long as Madoff can make money for them. People didn’t know what is going on until Madoff can’t find any new investor to throw money in his schemes. After that, his schemes collapsed. In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme but he never indicated the involvement of any other company employees or his family members...
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...and as a lifeguard on the beaches of Long Island, Bernard Madoff founded “Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities,” a “trading power” house that would become one of the largest independent trading operations in the securities industry (Washington, 2012). In the year 2000 his company ranked among the top trading and securities firms in the nation. By age 70, his name had become legendary; he was considered to be one of the most “influential spokesmen” on Wall Street. But on December 11, 2008, Bernard Madoff was arrested and charged “in a 20 year Ponzi scheme, which would come to be known as “the most infamous fraud in Wall Street history (Leonard, 2008; Washington, 2012).” Mr. Madoff pleaded guilty to all federal charges filed against him, which included the following: “11 felony counts, including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury (Washington, 2012).” Judge Denny Chin was in charge of the proceedings, and on June 29, 2009, Bernard Madoff, former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange, was sentenced to the maximum penalty of 150 years. This paper will seek to analyze this case in its multiple dimensions in order to identify all ethical issues and propose potential alternatives to the moral choices that Bernard Madoff made. Facts Bernard Lawrence Madoff was born April 29, 1938. He grew up in a small Jewish community in Queens, New York. At age 22, in 1960, he founded his own wealth management business, “Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.” He made his business out...
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...White Collar Crime: Ponzi Scheme with a Focus on Bernard Madoff NAME College White Collar Crime: Ponzi Scheme with a Focus on Bernard Madoff Most people, when they hear the word “crime,” think about street crime or violent crime such as murder, rape, theft, or drugs. However, there is another type of crime that has cost people their life savings, investors’ billions of dollars, and has had significant impacts of multiple lives; it is called white collar crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines white collar crime as illegal acts which are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trust and which are not dependent upon the application or threat of physical force or violence. Individuals and organizations commit these acts to obtain money, property, or services; to avoid the payment or loss of money or services; or to secure personal or business advantage (as cited in Barnett, n.d., para. 3). White collar crimes consists of such things as embezzlement, bank fraud, forgery, insider trading and investment schemes. This paper is going to focus on a Ponzi scheme, a type of investment scheme, and Bernard Madoff. Madoff is probably one of the most known offenders when it comes to the Ponzi scheme. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) defines a Ponzi scheme as “an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors” (U.S. Securities, n.d.). In another words, a person...
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...evolved together with advances in technology, and some have proved to be more efficient than other. This case study is chronology of the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Bernie Madoff began his brokerage firm in 1960 and grew it into one of the largest on Wall Street, New York, USA .While doing so; he began investing money as a favor to family and friends, though he was not licensed to do so. Over a period of fifty years, these side investments became an investment fund that mushroomed into a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Bernie pled guilty without a trial on March 12, 2009, and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Thousands of wealthy clients, philanthropic organizations and middle class people whose pension funds found their way into Bernie’s investment fund lost their life savings. Background In December 2008, the highly respected American businessman Bernard Madoff made the headlines when the US authorities accused him of orchestrating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme which is the biggest financial frauds of all time and made of him “The Conman of the Century”. Bernard Madoff also called “Bernie" is a former American businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor, financier and the former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market and held a seat on the government advisory board on stock market regulation. During his entire long successful financial career Madoff has been considered as a trustworthy, well respected and responsible man. Bernie epitomized the American dream...
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...The Fraud of the Century: The Case of Bernard Madoff The fraud perpetrated by Bernard Madoff which was discovered in December, 2008 is based upon a Ponzi scheme. Madoff took money from new investors to pay earnings for existing customers. The greater the payout to retiring and withdrawing customer, the more revenue or clients he would need to start and “investment relationship” with Madoff. The Ponzi scheme was named after Charles Ponzi who in the early 20th Century, saw a way to profit from international reply coupons. International reply coupons were a guarantee of return postage in response to an international letter. Charles Ponzi determined that he could make money, legally, by swapping out these coupons for more expensive postage stamps in countries where the stamps were of higher value. While making a significant profit with this system, Ponzi got the idea of enticing investors to provide him more capital to trade coupons for higher priced postage stamps. His promise to investors was a 50% profit in a few days. Touted as a financial wizard and the ‘Warren Buffet’ of his day, Ponzi lived outside Boston, he had a fairly opulent life bringing in as much as $250,000/day. Part of Ponzi’s success came from is personal charisma and ability to con even savvy investors. The promised payout was supported by the new investors anxious to take advantage of these robust returns because he appeared to create an image of power, trust, and responsibility. In July of 1920...
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...The Fraud of the Century: The Case of Bernard Madoff The fraud perpetrated by Bernard Madoff which was discovered in December, 2008 is based upon a Ponzi scheme. Madoff took money from new investors to pay earnings for existing customers. The greater the payout to retiring and withdrawing customer, the more revenue or clients he would need to start and “investment relationship” with Madoff. The Ponzi scheme was named after Charles Ponzi who in the early 20th Century, saw a way to profit from international reply coupons. International reply coupons were a guarantee of return postage in response to an international letter. Charles Ponzi determined that he could make money, legally, by swapping out these coupons for more expensive postage stamps in countries where the stamps were of higher value. While making a significant profit with this system, Ponzi got the idea of enticing investors to provide him more capital to trade coupons for higher priced postage stamps. His promise to investors was a 50% profit in a few days. Touted as a financial wizard and the ‘Warren Buffet’ of his day, Ponzi lived outside Boston, he had a fairly opulent life bringing in as much as $250,000/day. Part of Ponzi’s success came from is personal charisma and ability to con even savvy investors. The promised payout was supported by the new investors anxious to take advantage of these robust returns because he appeared to create an image of power, trust, and responsibility. In July of 1920...
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...| The Lie of The Century | Analysis of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi Scheme | | ' Introduction As long as the investment financial market existed, only one man was able to etched his name to the investment history as the greatest fraudster, and his name is Bernard Madoff. A brilliant fraudster that able to swindled over $50 billion from thousands of people using a type of investment fraud called "Ponzi Scheme." Using this type of investment frauds and his charming personality, Madoff stolen money from politicians, such as Senator Frank Lautenberg, famous celebrities, such as Kelvin Bacon, hedge fund directors, such as R. Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, universities, such as Yeshiva University, banking institutions, such as Union Bancaire Privee, and charitable organizations, such as Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. (Deborah & Strober, 2009) In that one day in the 11th of December in 2008, thousands people wake up to know the money that they entrusted to Madoff is nothing more than just a "lie." In other words, numbers that exist without any meaning. Madoff's Biography Born in Queens, New York, Madoff established himself from a humble blue collar workers, who earned his money from lifeguarding and installing sprinkle systems, to a genius international million dollar investor, who stolen billions of dollars from his clients. His investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Security (BMIS), based in New York, but its clients are as far as from European, South...
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...Accounting Fraud Examination By: Wagner October 12, 2011 Introduction As we look back on the first decade of the 21st Century, we see that Corporate America and the Financial Markets were riddled with corruption and fraud. At the beginning of the decade we saw the likes of Enron and WorldCom become insolvent due to accounting frauds of epic proportions. The one case that stands out amongst all of them is the Bernard Madoff case, which is considered to be the largest fraud case of all time. “Madoff managed to lure billions of dollars away from huge charities, as well as wealthy individuals in both the United States and Europe by getting them to invest in his hedge fund. He did so by claiming extraordinary returns (generally in the low double digits). His scheme eventually reached a staggering $50 billion under "management" (Armstrong, 2008). Mr. Madoff was born on April 29, 1938; he graduated from Far Rockaway High School in 1956. He then enrolled in Hofstra University Law School from which he did not graduate. In 1960 he created Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BMIS) with initial capital of $5000 (Gagnier, 2008). In the years to come his firm became ranked as “one of the top money markets on the NASDAQ” (Gregoriou, et al, 2009). He was described as “a man that had an impeccable reputation on Wall Street. Investing with him was an exclusive privilege, a clear sign that one had made it socially. Bernard Madoff was a legend” (Gregoriou, et al, 2009)...
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...side business that he started to manage investments for family and friends. Through word of mouth, he began attraction outside investors and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities was formed. However, a few people were not fooled and saw the danger behind the facade. A few people heeded the warning sign that were evident all around Madoff. They filed reports with the SEC on several occasions but they were too inexperienced to look deeper. In the end the story holds us not because of the engrossing details of the scam, but because of its human element. Madoff emerges here not as some master criminal, but as a sad man who sad man of weak character who committed one of the crimes of the century, instead of simply telling the truth. His story is not the story of ridiculous greed but more the picture of our unlimited aptitude for self-delusion. Bernard L. Madoff was arrested in December 2008 for defrauding thousands of individuals and organizations of billions of dollars for over two decades. The part of Madoff’s investment advisory company involved in private-investment or assess-management was where all of his illicit activities were carried out. In fact, most employees had no ideal he was stealing from his clients. Madoff had perpetrated an outsized Ponzi scheme, a Brobdingnagian con game (Lewis, 2012). In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty of soliciting funds to buy securities and failing to invest the money. He used the money instead, as did the notorious Charles...
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...Vince Trav Paper #2 April 15, 2015 The Mix of Power and Responsibility “With great power comes great responsibility”, is an infamous line from the movie Spiderman, and even though it is cliché, I’ve always found that to be very true. Power and responsibility can be explored through Phillip Zimbardo’s “The Lucifer Effect”, and how his work is related to two major financial scandals of the 21st century, which involve Enron and Bernard Madoff. In both scandals, there were people in a position of power who carried a surmounting level of responsibility, but used their power in very manipulative ways for their own personal gain. The high level executives of Enron and Bernard Madoff were on a rampant quest for money, which was the key driver that led to a lot of destruction. In doing so, both Enron and Madoff acted with major lack of responsibility. It is easy to make the assumption that the aforementioned individuals in both scandals are clearly the one’s that will be held responsible for the mess they made, but it is interesting to see how through their power they shed as much responsibility as they could on other people. Their power also had an effect on a greater scale involving their control over many people, which is relatable to Phillip Zimbardo’s work on human nature. The film, “Enron: The Smartest Men in Room”, shows how there was such a great lack of responsibility by the people involved because of their determination to make as much money as possible,...
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...{DC(-P[,"^q-' li Frauds of the Century BERNARD MADOFF worked as a lifeguard to eam enough money to start his own securities firm. Almost half a century later, the colossal Ponzi scheme into which it mutated has proved impossible to keep afloat unlike Mr Madoffs 55-foot fishing boat, "Bull,,. The $ I 7. I billion that Mr Madoff claimed to have under management earlier this year is all but gone. His alleged confession that the fraud could top $50 billion looks increasingly plausible:, ' clients have admitted to exposures amounting to more than half that. On December l6th the head of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, which is recovering what it can for investors, said the multiple sets of accounts kept by the 70-year-old were in "complete disanay" and could take six months to sort out. It is hard to imagine a more apt end to Wall Street's worst year in decades. The known list of victims grows longer and more star-studded by the day. Among them are prominent billionaires, including Steven Spielberg; the owner of the New York Mets baseball team; Carl Shapiro, a nonagenarian clothing magnate who may have lost $545m; thousands of wealthy retirees; and a cluster of mostly Jewish charities, some of which face closure. Dozens of supposedly sophisticated financial firms were caughl out too,.including banks such as Santander and HSBC, and Fairfield Greenwich, an alternative-investment specialist that had funnelled no ...
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...February 17, 2015 Professor Mari Hadley Summary and Discussion The author provides an overview of the case of Bernard “Bernie” Madoff, a businessman and investment manager who is believed to have stolen as much as $65 billion from his investors (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2014). Bernie Madoff was operating not only the largest Ponzi scheme in history, but is also believed to have perpetrated the largest financial fraud in history. His network of investors included many prominent people from the financial world as well as the social elite. Madoff’s criminal career came to an end in 2008 when the recession developed. His supply of available funds began to diminish, and he was no longer able to pay his investors. Madoff was subsequently arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to one hundred and fifty years in prison. The authors also discuss the question of how Madoff was able to maintain such a massive criminal operation over a twenty year period (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2014). In particular, the question is examined concerning why the Securities and Exchange Commission was not more thorough in its investigations of Madoff’s activities, especially after Harry Markopoulos had been warning the SEC for the better part of a decade that Madoff’s financial operations were questionable in nature. A discussion is also provided of how various warning signs were available, but how Madoff was able to manipulate potential investigators into failing to thoroughly investigate what he was doing...
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...beginning, the lawyer fees are the company’s or individual’s responsibility. It requires adequate measures for dressing of the grievances. The involvement of political parties in personal and political white-collar crimes are challenges for an effective legal system. The economic conditions and lack of jobs lead to vocational crimes. White-collar legislation: There are multiple types of white-collar crime and the case law has recognized several types. It is evident that insider trading has been recognized well before other cybercrimes as an important type of white-collar crime. The provisions of law as well as the remedies available for white-collar crime are developed and improved frequently in today’s world. The changes in technology and online presence of shopping, trading, and e-commerce activity is also prone to fraud and numerous other crimes. The online identities are used in several ways by criminals to unlawfully damage the financial, business, and trade position of individuals and corporations (Friedrichs, 2009). It us observed that case laws provide...
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...operations has been a talked about subject since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whether it is sustainability or social responsibility, approaches to business ethics have yet to be standardized. At the peak of today’s ethical environmental dilemmas stands Monsanto, the organization that prides itself on the ability to create sustainable agriculture. There are also scandals with regard to scrupulous or fraudulent investors, such as Bernard Madoff, who prosper at the expense of trusting individuals. Lending institutions have also taken advantage of the financially ill-informed consumers who have lost their homes and in some cases their families and lives as a result of subprime lending practices (cite). Toyota, who was once known as one of the world’s fastest growing auto makers (cite) deliberately ignored the safety of its consumers in effort to continue maximizing its profits. Organizations lacking business morals must understand that responsibility does not rest on one source, but rather it should be a collaborative effort between the companies, governments, and individuals (Business Ethics). Until standardized practices are followed at home and abroad, leaders will continue to search for their moral compasses. History and Supporters Social responsibility is about organizations giving back to the communities or countries that contribute to their success. In the twentieth-century it was discovered that the sustainability of the world’s natural resources...
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...history, there have been those who feel that the law is beneath them. This is highly unethical. Many companies have been destroyed because of poor ethical decisions. In turn, the person or people who called out their employers for violating the law end up losing their jobs, and in some instances, getting black-balled in their line of work. There are those who profit from blowing the whistle, aside from that is the risk really worth it? The answer is yes. In spite of the negative employment aspect, whistle blowing shows that a person has enough integrity to risk themselves in order to correct a bad situation. Three whistle blowers come to mind when the topic of ethical integrity arises; Sherron Watkins (Enron), Harry Markopolos (Bernie Madoff), and myself in my current place of employment. Each of us took the ethical high road and risked it all to try and make right what was/is blatantly wrong with the companies or people in question. Watkins & Enron Sherron Watkins worked at Enron for eight years. She sent a seven page letter to her employer mentioning the unethical accounting that was happening in the employee retirement sector. Sherron called it a Ponzi Scheme and worried that those who were making money off other people’s retirement would end up cashing and burning when this scam came to light. Watkins called this unethical treatment of worker’s savings “funny accounting”. She feared that her time at Enron would be considered worthless on her resume. However,...
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