Not sure if any of you out there saw this, but Bernard Madoff, the former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market, was arrested last week Thursday on a single charge of securities fraud:
Bernard Madoff, a quiet force on Wall Street for decades, was arrested and charged on Thursday with allegedly running a $50 billion “Ponzi scheme” in what may rank among the biggest fraud cases ever.
The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market is best known as the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the closely-held market-making firm he launched in 1960. But he also ran a hedge fund that U.S. prosecutors said racked up $50 billion of fraudulent losses.
In a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in January of this year, Madoff indicated his investment advisory business served between 11 and 25 clients and had a total of about $17.1 billion in assets under management. When Madoff was arrested, the SEC said it appeared that virtually all of the assets of his hedge fund business were missing, making it extremely unlikely the victims of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme will see any of the money they’ve lost returned to them. Personally I hope authorities throw the book at Bernard Madoff; he deserves nothing less.
I certainly hope events such as this are not the reason the 21 banks have not been transparent in their releasing information as to the whereabouts of the bailout money . Keep in mind this individual knew the very ins and outs of how the Nasdaq operated and could very well have trained other crooks on how to scam. If the SEC could not watch one individual scam 50 Billion from savay investors what about the 100-200-300 that might have been out there in control of 1 Billion ea?
Rick, I’ve got no doubt that there’s been some shady dealings with the taxpayer bailout money, but I think it’s more likely that most of these banks just didn’t use the money for the purposes they received the money.