http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081212/bs_nm/us_madoff_arrest
The Famous founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. and former chairman of NASDAQ was charged with securities fraud on Thursday, December 11. The once highly respected Madoff lost around $50 billion dollars in a big pyramid "Ponzi Scheme," which is believed to have started in 2005. Basically, what this means is that Madoff took money from investors and lost that money through bad investments. He then lied to his investors and told them that he was getting 10% or 15% returns on these investment, although he was losing a lot of that money, which he kept in hedge funds. He then used money from new investors to pay the old investors whose money he already lost. Madoff paid investors money that wasn't his. This created a pyramid affect, which over time grew to an estimated $50 billion dollars in losses. When many people began questioning his methods, Madoff confessed that he was lying about the returns he was telling his clients about and unveiled his entire scheme. Many big companies invested in him, which lost millions of dollars. Many of them went out of business. Some people lost their entire life savings and their lives are forever changed. Madoff is now charged with a security fraud and when found guilty he will spend up to 20 years in jail with a $5,000,000 fine. The disgraced 70 year old investor paid a $10,000,000 bond and he now spends his time in his Manhattan apartment under high security. The Securities Exchange Commission is working on at least partially compensating all of them victims of this scheme, which may take a long time. Each can get up to $500,000 from a special reserve.
In my opinion this was nothing but a desperate act by a desperate man, who hid under his impressive resume to take people's money. He made a few bad investments and tried to cover them up. I think that's incredibly stupid for a man that is known to have a brilliant financial mind. It was an accident waiting to be uncovered, with absolutely no way to be fixed.
How Do You Steal $50 Billion Dollars?- video
US Financier Bernard Madoff Admits 50 Billion Dollar Fraud- video
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