Obama, what does the scouter say about the level of his claims?

[kuronosan]

Trustee: Nearly 9,000 claims in Madoff scam - U.S. business- msnbc.com

NEW YORK - A court-appointed trustee unraveling Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud signaled Thursday that he may go after the disgraced financier’s family to pay victim claims, which have grown to almost 9,000.

Legal action against the family “is a matter that’s being looked into,” trustee Irving Picard said during a telephone conference call with reporters.
Picard already has filed lawsuits in bankruptcy court in Manhattan to try to force hedge funds and other large investors to return $10.1 billion in fictitious profits paid by Madoff’s firm, alleging they should have known about the fraud.


As of Wednesday, there were 8,848 from customers claiming losses, he said.

If we can throw a few more claims out there...

Just curious as to what the significance of this entire situation is. Is it about the housing problem or is it an insurance scam? I keep hearing about it but I haven't been able to find any significant information (or maybe I'm just really stupid).

[Correction]

What 9000?!
http://i39.tinypic.com/ndrjg1.jpg

[miokomioko]

Madoff's treachery has reached so broad that just about anyone can bullshit their way into a claim against him and probably be shrugged as legitimate. BRB, calling lawyer.

[Correction]

Madoff's treachery has reached so broad that just about anyone can bullshit their way into a claim against him and probably be shrugged as legitimate. BRB, calling lawyer.

This will likely be the defense the put up.

"Judge you can't possibly find that all 9000 of these commoners have a legitimate claim against my poor aristocratic self-starting family man of ill health. Do not let him be crucified as a scapegoat for the economic mess. Summary judgment plskthxbye."

[Olo401]

What 9000?!
http://i39.tinypic.com/ndrjg1.jpg

I fuckin' lold

[MyTitthias]

[QUOTE/]

Just curious as to what the significance of this entire situation is. Is it about the housing problem or is it an insurance scam? I keep hearing about it but I haven't been able to find any significant information (or maybe I'm just really stupid).[/QUOTE]

Ponzi scheme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I assume this is what you want to know about. He was just amazingly successful at hiding the fact that he was running a Ponzi scheme for years, which crashed because of the housing bubble collapse.

[kuronosan]

That's sounding like a pyramid scheme to me. Pretty damn clever (and stupid) at the same time.

[0ni0n]

Here's the latest frontline documentary on the Madoff scandal. Basically alot of people couldn't resist the money and just looked the other way very well knowing that it was too good to be true. It's also baffling how the SEC repeatedly dropped the ball for 6 years straight and even cleared Madoff after 2 investigations.

[archibaldcrane]

Madoff was a damn fine legit hedge fund manager. Of course noone can beat the market (besides Warren Buffett) for that long of a duration, but it's not like he was some no-name charlatan either.

[0ni0n]

Agree that alot of people were buying into his name recognization, but anyone with a moderate understanding of finance knows no hedge fund managers or deal makers can realistically produce 20% return every year with minimum volatility. Even warren buffet has had ups and downs along with the market for the past 30 years. Madoff was as if he was impervious to the effect of the market movement.

[archibaldcrane]

The funny thing is, the people who "invested" some money with him 20 years ago and didn't reinvest the returns still made a killing, even if they lost 100% of their initial investment.

It has been discussed whether people who made money off him should have it ganked to compensate the losers, since it was all a shell game to begin with.

[Khamsin]

The funny thing is, the people who "invested" some money with him 20 years ago and didn't reinvest the returns still made a killing, even if they lost 100% of their initial investment.

It has been discussed whether people who made money off him should have it ganked to compensate the losers, since it was all a shell game to begin with.

So if I ever get lucky enough to make a fortune in a single investment transaction, withdraw enough to live the rest of my life on and bury it somewhere?

[Drex]

Irving Picard

fuck yes

[0ni0n]

Well, at a 18% guaranteed annual return, you will double your money every 4 years!! So if you invested in $100,000 with Madoff since say from 1992 to 2008, for 16 years, you will end up with

100,000 > 200,000 (end of year 4) > 400,000 (end of year 8 ) > 800,000 (end of year 12)> 1,600,000 (end of year 16)

That's ridiculously high return.

[kuronosan]

Well, at a 18% guaranteed annual return, you will double your money every 4 years!! So if you invested in $100,000 with Madoff since say from 1992 to 2008, for 16 years, you will end up with

100,000 > 200,000 (end of year 4) > 400,000 (end of year 8 ) > 800,000 (end of year 12)> 1,600,000 (end of year 16)

That's ridiculously high return.

What the shit, how did people even find out about this and get involved?

[0ni0n]

What the shit, how did people even find out about this and get involved?

It's mostly word of mouth in rich communities in New york, florida, cali and europe. You would have to be either rich or famous or both. And that's why the total loss could accumulate to about 65 billion dollar.

[archibaldcrane]

Being a jew doesn't hurt either.

seriously not trolling a ton of the people that got fucked the worst were jews, including like...the entire Elie Wiesel foundation apparently...

[_chuchu]

bump.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124604151653862301.html

NEW YORK -- Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison Monday, meaning he will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars after admitting in March to running one of the largest and longest financial frauds in recent memory.

At a packed hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan ordered Mr. Madoff, 71 years old, to serve the statutory maximum sentence in prison. Applause briefly broke out after the sentence was announced.

Late Friday, Judge Chin signed a preliminary forfeiture order against Mr. Madoff for more than $170 billion, leaving the one-time chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market penniless.

"Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinary evil," Judge Chin said.

On March 12, Mr. Madoff was ordered directly to jail after pleading guilty to 11 criminal counts, including securities fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, in a decades-long Ponzi scheme that bilked thousands of investors out of billions of dollars.

"I'm sorry; I know that doesn't help you," said Mr. Madoff, briefly turning to face his victims at the hearing prior to the judge's sentence.

He had run the scam for years through the investment advisory arm of his business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, by promising steady returns and by presenting an air of exclusivity by not taking all comers and recruiting investors via friends and associates.

The scheme defrauded a wide range of investors, including individuals, hedge funds, charities and trusts, such as a charitable trust established by Boston Properties Inc. Chairman and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman.

When the fraud was revealed in December, some individuals went from being millionaires to being nearly destitute overnight.

Mr. Madoff claimed to have as much as $65 billion in his firm's accounts at the end of November, but prosecutors said the accounts only held a small fraction of that.

So far, the court-appointed trustee for Mr. Madoff's firm has identified about 1,341 accounts holders who suffered estimated losses of $13.2 billion. The trustee has recovered more than $1.2 billion for investors.

Last week, Mr. Madoff's lawyers asked for a sentence of as a little as 12 years, citing his life expectancy of about 13 years. Instead, Mr. Madoff received one of the stiffer sentences handed out to a white-collar defendant in New York federal court in recent years.

Yesterday, when I read his request for just 12 years sentence, I hearily lol'd. Finally some justice has come, but let's see how much these folks can recover.

[*Shinzon*]

They probably wont get a dime back to be honest and that's the shame of the situation. The money they recovered is all they could find. They did pull some from his off-shore accounts and such but there's really a ton of ways to hide money overseas that they probably wont find anything other than what they have. What that means is the investors who fell victim to his scheme have probably already accepted the loses. The government will want their share of taxes from Madoff so it'll be interesting to see if whether or not the government gets a cut of whatever money is in fact returned to some of these people.

[*Shinzon*]

They probably wont get a dime back to be honest and that's the shame of the situation. The money they recovered is all they could find. They did pull some from his off-shore accounts and such but there's really a ton of ways to hide money overseas that they probably wont find anything other than what they have. What that means is the investors who fell victim to his scheme have probably already accepted the loses knowing how deep the scheme went. The government will want their share of taxes from Madoff as well, so it'll be interesting to see if whether or not the government gets a cut of whatever money is in fact returned to some of these people and how the investors react considering the government really didn't properly monitor this guy.

Edited: Maintenance screwed up the post originally.