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Madoff Sentenced To 150 Years
selven was one of several readers to send in the news that Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. "Bernard Madoff's victims gasped and cheered when he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, but they walked away knowing little more about how he carried out the biggest robbery in Wall Street history. In one of the most dramatic courtroom conclusions to a corporate fraud case, the 71-year-old swindler was unemotional as he was berated by distraught investors during the 90-minute proceeding. Many former clients had hoped he would shed more light on his crime and explain why he victimized so many for so long. But he did not. Madoff called his crime 'an error of judgment' and his 'failure,' reiterating previous statements that he alone was responsible for the $65 billion investment fraud. His victims said they did not hear much new from Madoff in his five-minute statement. They also said they did not believe anything he said. As he handed down the maximum penalty allowed, US District Judge Denny Chin... [said], 'I simply do not get the sense that Mr. Madoff has done all that he could or told all that he knows.'"
The message to would-be scammers is: don't get caught.
all the jackasses at the SEC that ignored data again and again which pointed to fraud and enabled him to get away with this for so many years?
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
I'm not sure you're aware of how the world of high-finance works. There have been hedge funds handling over $10B with FIVE employees. Seriously.
I think it's very likely that there were others in-the-know. But they probably worked out a plea to provide documentation to nail the case against Madoff, which is why they won't be prosecuted. Or Madoff is looking for redemption after perpetrating this fraud, and decided to shoulder the rap for everyone else involved. I think the last option is the most likely, and I think that his sons were who he was protecting.
But it doesn't really matter, does it? These were the extremely wealthy who were conned. As long as someone gets hanged (or imprisoned forever) we don't care. Hell, look at the swindling by Enron execs... that directly affected the retirement savings of millions of people, and in the end, we didn't really care.
As far as the general public is concerned, it's not a big deal when the wealthy steal from the wealthy. That's business by another name. And it's not a big deal when the wealthy steal from the poor -- that's business as usual. All we really care about is when the poor steal from the wealthy, because we always look down on those poorer than us, we like to imagine ourselves as wealthy, and so when the poor steal, it's an affront to our ideals.
Anyway, I'm rambling a bit... so I'll just sum up by saying: Yes, others were likely involved. Yes, he took the fall. But no one cares, as long as there's a spectacle.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Seriously, it's impossible to get rid of $65 Billion without having something valuable to show for it. So far they've gathered the low 9 figures of $ from him, less than 1% of the money.
Do you have ESP?
There are several sites I no longer bother opening links for:
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televisa
foxnews
No sig for the moment.
How about all the clients who did everything they could to have the privilege of being Madoff's clients? I mean heck what were they thinking while they saw their accounts having unbelievable returns? They might as well take some responsibilities.
...it will send a message to investors.
Message? Entrusting all your money to one guy is a bad idea. It's the same message they should have received when people lost all their retirement at Enron. Yes, there were people who tried to diversify towards the end and got unfairly shut out; but they should have been diversifying all along.
The Madoff lesson is that you don't just diversify your investments, you diversify your managers. In other words, one manager who says the portfolio is diversified is not enough. You should be employing more than one manager. One of them should be YOU. You may find out that they aren't any better than you. In that case, perhaps you should simply cut them out entirely; although I'm not convinced there aren't at least some managers who are worth their fees. It's just that I've never actually met one. It's become a truism over the years that a basket of stocks meeting certain criteria will beat most managers. That's why index funds have become so popular.
Of course, this falls under the category of "good problems to have" since many in the US now have a negative or very small net worth.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Can I ask why this article is tagged "republicans"? Bernard Madoff isn't one, since he gave 88% of his political spending to the Democratic party (source). Nor is Judge Denny Chin a definite Republican (his affiliation is unknown). Alright, so some of the victims were, and probably some of the conspirators, but there's no reason this should be tagged the way it is.
Better yet, when he retired from his career as a fraud he managed to secure himself of free breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of his life.
Sure. The extremely wealthy. And, also, charities. What do you think of stealing $15 million from The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity? Maybe $24 mill from New York University or $3 million from Bard College bothers you? I wonder what United Association Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 267 in Syracuse thinks about your blanket characterization which indicates that their loss (still under calculation) doesn't matter.
(For reference, the victim list.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
But if you're old, and you've lived a full life, you can rest assured that your kids and your wife will still get to live a life of luxury, while you live a life of leisure in a state-run old age home. And you'll have plenty of influence to ensure you get a comfy life inside prison, since you can pay off anyone you need.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
"read and relax where he is safe"
They haven't decided where he is serving his sentence yet. If its a minimum security country club prison your assessment might be correct. If it a real federal penitentiary with violent criminals it might not be so safe or easy. There are also more than a few people who might wish him harm and people can be harmed in prison for a price.
All in all I really don't feel any sympathy for his victims. To me it was a greedy crook fleecing greedy people who were borderline themselves. It is more than a little unrealistic to expect 10-12% annual returns year after year with no risk. You can make a LOT of money compounding at that rate. Getting that kind of annual return pretty much always entails high risk. There is an old saying you should be very afraid when you are making a lot of money because its usually too good to be true and wont last, and you can make a lot of money when everyone else is afraid.
His victims were in a lot of ways just as greedy as he was. His feeder funds and victims must have suspected it was fishy, but went along as long as they got theirs out of it. They mostly seem to have thought they were special and privileged and deserved to get returns ordinary people couldn't. I feel no sympathy for people like that. They gambled in the casino Wall Street has turned in to and lost. Tough luck, nothing to see here and time to move on. Stop crying. Your own fault you put all your money in to an investment that was too good to be true.
About the only good thing that could come out of it is to compel meaningful reform and regulation of Wall Steet and and all indications are that isn't going to happen. Wall Street is rapidly going back to business as usual. Wall Street cost people like 14 trillion in wealth in the last collapse and most of it was due to criminal fraud and Ponzi schemes just as bad as Madoff and very few of those fat cats are going to jail. Obama and Geitner's proposed reforms are toothless.
I saw in passing a week or so some British lord and financial type was testifying in front of an EU commission. His take was the big banks and hedge funds were threatening regulators with blackmail. If the EU and the US go too far with regulation, they would move to Switzerland or the Caribbean and take their money with them. His take was the fat cats were racing to get back to were they were in 2006, demanding ridiculously high compensation, resuming the high risk investments, undermining reforms and he fully expects another bubble and collapse in 10 or 15 years. The tax payers and ordinary Joe's will be screwed again and the rich will just keep getting richer. It seems almost inevitable because the banks conned all their governments in to bailing them out. The essential concept of moral hazard has been completely undermined. The fat cats now know they can gamble and take all the winnings and when they lose taxpayers will take all the losses. If the banks were "too big to fail" before its even worse now because due to the forced mergers of the last year America three biggest banks are now bigger than ever. JP Morgan, B of A and Citibank are now the three largest banks in the world based on tier 1 capital due to mergers.
@de_machina
But if you didn't lose money, it wouldn't be a scam.
In a country without socialized healthcare, fraud *is* a violent crime.
I agree with your post completely but I don't think Madoff stashed most of that $65 billion in a Swiss bank account or anything else that might leave a paper trail. Since he was running a pyramid scheme, most of it probably when to pay off other investors.
Of course, he undoubtedly skimmed off a tidy sum for use by he and his spouse.
This ain't rocket surgery.
5 years hell. Now come all the appeals. Is he out on bail?
This is money we're talking about. That makes for a looong sentence.
Now if he'd killed someone, you'd be right.
Wikileaks, no DNS
There were at least two people who took their own lives directly because of their losses from his theft:
These men are equally as dead as any two other murder victims, and were apparently in no trouble or danger prior to Madoff's criminal activity.
And just in case you want to blame the victims, consider the phrase "danger to society" doesn't necessarily mean "physical danger". Compare what he did to a mugger pointing a gun at you, but not shooting you: you might lose $200 bucks from your wallet, you might have crapped your pants, but you're still alive, and still have a job. Causing the collapse of hundreds of businesses, the unemployment of thousands, the destruction of retirement funds of tens of thousands of people -- I'd say he ranks right up there with any weapon of mass destruction in terms of the damage done to our society. "Danger to society" isn't exclusively the province of the barrel of a gun.
Prison is exactly the right place for him to spend the next 150 years. My only complaint is that he didn't start serving it when he began his fraud, which federal investigators place about 1975. He got to live too many good years outside of the gray bars.
John
There are some sicknesses that socialized healthcare either will not cover or will not cover thoroughly enough to really cure.
Bullshit.
with socialized healthcare you get placed in "review hell" because A) the doctors get paid the same really no matter what they do
Also bullshit. In Ontario, doctors get paid per treatment/visit, more or less depending on what kind of treatment they do. No different than in the US.
and B) there are many other doctors/clinics.
I'm not even sure what the hell this has to do with anything.
If you say you need antibiotics for something, chances are in the US you can get them for whatever weak reason, with socialized healtcare if you have a non-common illness the answer will always be to wait longer.
Again, bullshit. If I need antibiotics for something, my doctor writes me a prescription for antibiotics, and I go get it filled. Of course, if I don't actually need antibiotics, my doctor doesn't have an incentive to feed me medication that I don't actually need. If you want to talk intelligently about universal or public health care, go learn something about the subject instead of repeating the lies you've been told. Here's an interesting fact for you. Of the top 40 or so countries in the world, the US has the most inefficient health care system. It's twice as inefficient as the next most inefficient health care system.
Universal public healthcare systems are operating right now, that are at least twice as efficient as the health care system in the US. Stop and think about that. This isn't theorizing about what a public health system might do, this is real actual performance in the real world. Of course, there are also many nations with fully private health care that are at least twice as efficient as your own system, which should be ringing bells in your head right about now. The problem isn't about public/private, the problem lies elsewhere. Many Americans will say that the discrepancy is caused by the "cheeseburger nation", but here in Canada we're just as obese as you are, and we do much better than you in terms of health care efficiency.
So what is the real problem? Why is it that in the US, you have absurdly high numbers of people with no coverage at all, and yet you spend more per person on health care than any other country? Follow the money....
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
punishment
Function: noun
1 : the act of punishing
2 : a penalty (as a fine or imprisonment) inflicted on an
offender through the judicial and esp. criminal process
He's not going to prison because he's currently a danger to anyone. He's going to prison because The People decided he should be punished for his misdeeds. The People have decided that probation is just not enough punishment for destroying the pensions of thousands--maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of victims. Maybe he didn't physically assault these people--but he didn't just rob them of money, he robbed many of these people of YEARS of their hard work... Remember, some people have to get along by trading their, blood, sweat and tears; ultimately trading time for currency. When you annihilate someone's retirement account, I think an argument could be made that you're literally stealing time from their lives. Isn't that what murderers do, if more suddenly or brutally?
And before you try to use a reasoning of "setting an example" that is not justice.
The way I see it, prisons have two primary services to society: Deterrence before the act, and reformation after sentencing. You're welcome to argue their effectiveness in either of these roles (rather dismal, IMO)--but that's not the point. The point is, laws are useless unless they're backed by a set of mean and nasty, pointy teeth when it's appropriate. So what if it is "setting an example"? Maybe the prior examples just weren't harsh enough to dissuade ol' Bernie? Perhaps this might deter the next douche who starts on the path of stealing 65-70 billion, and contributing in no small part to a globally upset economy?
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
On the contrary, I was under the impression that by the nature of his ponzi scheme he had to keep it going because the moment he stopped everyone would realize what happened. I'm not sure how you just "walk away" from thousands of investors without giving them their money (and he couldn't, their money didn't really exist, hence the scam) and not raise any alarms.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Bullshit.
Not bullshit. There is not an unlimited supply of health care in either public or private systems. Rationing *always* happens in one form or another.
Of course, there are also many nations with fully private health care that are at least twice as efficient as your own system, which should be ringing bells in your head right about now. The problem isn't about public/private, the problem lies elsewhere.
Absolutely correct. The US healthcare manages to combine the worst of both worlds: the lack of guaranteed coverage, and the lack of competition and pricing signals. I primarily blame the ridiculous concept we have that our employers should pay for our health insurance. This makes no sense whatsoever; it eliminates direct competition and routes people into one-size-fits-all plans, and it means if you lose your job you're doubly screwed. It makes no more sense for my employer to pay for my health insurance than it does for them to pay for my house or car.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Not bullshit. There is not an unlimited supply of health care in either public or private systems. Rationing *always* happens in one form or another.
That's not what the GGP was arguing. He implied that rationing is peculiar to socialized health care. That is bullshit.
I primarily blame the ridiculous concept we have that our employers should pay for our health insurance. This makes no sense whatsoever; it eliminates direct competition and routes people into one-size-fits-all plans, and it means if you lose your job you're doubly screwed. It makes no more sense for my employer to pay for my health insurance than it does for them to pay for my house or car.
Is that really it? I think it might be more complicated. I get really suspicious of the fact that insurance companies have so much control over what they cover, and get to deny coverage for strictly financial reasons. In the private health care transaction, the one who controls access to the treatment (insurance companies) has all the power. The health care consumer is stuck. They need the treatment, they have no choice. They either pay, or go without and get sicker or die. Any transaction with that much power imbalance between two of the parties is ripe for exploitation. You're certainly on the right track though, I think.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.