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Bernie Madoff's Programmers Arrested
ZipK writes "With their former boss cooling his heels on a 150-year sentence, programmers Jerome O'Hara and George Perez are now in the US Attorney's crosshairs. They've been arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy, and 'accused of producing false documents and trading records at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York.' Apparently Madoff's fraud was too large and too complex to be foisted entirely by hand."
If you destroy evidence, make sure you destroy the backups, too.
So tell me, when are they going to go after the programmers at Goldman Sachs?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I always tell my kids that "so-and-so made me do it" is no defense. And I'm sure nearly every parent has taught their children that for generations. I hope these guys roast for not listening to their parents!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
And that's why we have cellscripts and conjobs
There are so many great opportunities out there for making a legitimate living programming that it makes me wonder why these guys volunteered to spend the best years of their lives stealing from people.
If you've followed the details of the Madoff scandal, it was obvious that it required substantial computer support.
Each month, Madoff's investors got statements which showed fictitious trades and fictitious profits. The phony trades were for real stocks, with prices which were (almost) real. But the trades were chosen retrospectively, which is like betting on a race after it's run. So superficially reasonable statements came out. This was all generated on an AS-400 that had been in use for this for several decades.
The software wasn't very good. If they'd been better at it, they could have generated statements which showed trades which exactly matched real trades of others (from the "tape"; trades are public but traders are anonymous), delivered trade confirmations every day, and still shown phony profits just by picking trades randomly distributed around the 75% of each day's trades. That would survive external examination, but not a real audit. Close looks at Madoff statements show trades which could not possibly have occurred; the price is outside the day's trading range. Sloppy.
I went to an engineering school that was founded in the aftermath of WW2, so had a strong ethos of: "scientists and engineers need to understand what we're doing and why, not just implement stuff other people tell us to". I.e., don't assume the people above you are in charge of the "why" and as the scientist/engineer all you need to care about is the "how". Usually it's seen as more of an ethics thing, but interesting to be reminded that on occasion it can be a matter of self-interest, too, since you have a legal responsibility to know what you're doing and why, at least to some minimum degree.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think you're reading too much into it.
The idea being that a large investment firm, and possibly others and their clients, are all using certain code to help them decide when to execute trades. An unscrupulous third party could use knowledge of that code to place investments that trigger trades by GS, which is large enough to affect the market. In effect manipulating the market by manipulating GS.
The market gets manipulated by the sheer size of GS, and the main loser would be GS, as well, since they're already using their software to maximize their own benefit.
Which brings to mind the issue that the sheer size of GS is the real issue, not the software that they use. Someone here once said, "too big to fail? More like too big to be allowed to exist!" Everyone that received bail-out money should be broken into smaller entities on a staggered basis when the economy recovers.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
any particular kind of metal you'd like the chains made from
Mercury.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
> That's 10% 10% barely covers overhead, and employee salaries.
Put simply, Profit = Revenue - Costs.
All overheads, salaries etc ARE costs. So Dell's $1.5b profit on sales of $14b isn't at all bad at all. It's very good.
What you're talking about is margin - the difference between the cost price of something and the sale price. The figure of "30%" is a generally accepted minimum margin for a business. I think it's based on a reseller. If you buy a box of paper in at $10, then you should have to sell it for $15 (plus tax if applicable) in order to survive. That $5 should cover all of your costs, with a little left over for profit.
I hate articles filled with lies.
Buffet routinely lobbied against the bailout legislation.
Buffet did lobby for bailouts of a different nature, in which the government would get voting stock in the companies they bailed out, there were clear stipulations on where money was spent (so it didn't go into pockets like his), and there was massive accountability.
When Buffet bailed out GE, he laid out such a framework and encouraged the government to follow suit. And while Buffet has a high personal worth because of stock he owns, he has always been know to live frugally, and is now giving away the massive bulk of his wealth.
However Buffet is a known conservative, so a liberally-slanted website is all but obligated to go on a character assassination for no good reason. (I'm neither Republican nor Democrat. I just hate lying. If anything, I support true liberalism, in which there is less government restriction period, and personal liberties are protected as much as possible).
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Very far from true.
The list of countries with no extradition treaties with the US is, more or less:
Afghanistan, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Central African Republic, Chad, China (People's Republic of China), the Union of the Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d' Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Madagascar, the Maldives, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Mauritania, the Federated States of Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Niger, Oman, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé & Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Bhutan, Iran, Taiwan, Korea (North).
...Oh My God! Does this mean Bernie Madoff was a robot?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Buffet routinely lobbied against the bailout legislation.
Buffet is a smart man. And everyone was against the bailout legislation. Except of course those to be bailed out, and the Pelosi inspired politicians.
I still remember the reports when it was first mentioned. "All my constituents aren't saying "No", they're saying "HELL NO!"". All that got swept under a pile of money however.
It's curious for me that, living in Costa Rica, the US dollar has plummeted against our local currency - to the point where a can of Coke is now twice as expensive here versus in the US (due to local inflation continuing despite our currency appreciating against the dollar). I think soon US citizens won't be able to afford to travel outside the US. It's a real pain in the ass for me, because I earn in dollars, so I'm becoming relatively poorer too compared to my wife who earns in local currency. We're talking 10-15% poorer in the past 3 months alone. Running the money printing presses in the US has everything to do with this. But no one listened to Ludwig von Mises the first time, anyway.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
For some reason I don't think we need an extradition treaty with Afghanistan..
Buffett is a Democrat.
And yes, Buffett did benefit from the bailouts... Not to mention Buffett recently tried to back Goldman's recent proposal to buy tax credits from Fannie Mae. He's not the boogeyman, but he's not the nice, friendly man with a sincere belief in capitalism that he is sometimes made out to be.
When you are a little fish . . . run to your lawyer, then together make yourselves the very best friends that the FBI ever had.
Yes, run. It is official Justice Department policy that only the first conspirator to report a criminal conspiracy gets off:. "(the) Division frequently encounters situations where a company approaches the government within days, and in some cases less than one business day, after one of its co-conspirators has secured its position as first in line for amnesty. Of course, only the first company to qualify receives amnesty. "
Madoff kept all of his billions of money in a single account at JP Morgan Chase bank. If they are going to bust his programmers, they should bust his bank too. Even for a bank the size of Chase, Madoff just leaving billions of dollars sitting in the account instead of investing it like he claimed to be doing must have gotten their attention one or a hundred times. If the bank looked the other way to hang onto a lucrative cash deposit, they are just as guilty as the programmers.
Andorra:
After reading your post I was inspired to wikipedia Andorra. I am a US citizen. Now I want to move to Andorra. Thank you =)
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
and if you owe them 100 billion dollars, that's everyone's problem.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
China is nice enough. However, in the case of China, if your country starts telling them that you stole billions of dollars, they're going to deport you for overstaying the visa that they just terminated. If your own country says "we want him back so we can kick his arse", then it is really not worth the effort for the Chinese government to argue with your government about a potential criminal they don't care about anyway. The US has sent Chinese embezzlers back to China, I'd imagine they would repay the favor. In fact, you'd have a very hard time finding a country that will knowingly take in a fugitive unless they can prove that they are a political refugee. Agreeing to repatriate suspects is an easy and popular way to get shady people out of your own country and keep the other country happy. You have never actually needed an extradition treaty to do it. Chinese law prohibits the extradition of Chinese citizens, which means that they will probably be tried by a local court instead, doubtfully a better outcome.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
The conservatives have spent how much on two wars? An honestly reported Defense budget, where costs such as medical care for wounded vets aren't shuffled over to HEW, makes military spending well more than 50% of the total. You could completely close all federal programs except prisons, war on drugs and defense, privatize everything there that you could, and you still have an incredibly bloated federal government at zero % liberalism.
And it was conservatives that rushed through the biggest single spending program ever, a bank bailout with no strings attached. The 'liberals' have spent less on this, taken more time for rational debate, and demanded more accountability. (And still ended up giving away our money to parasites and freeloaders, but at least at a slightly lower rate than your beloved conservatives).
You do know, don't you, that it's conservative drug war policy that drives over 90% of our foreign aid to South and Central America? See, when we give Colombia modern troop transport helicopters for anti-drug use, we have complaints from their neighbors that those choppers could be used for other activities, such as a nice little invasion, so we give the neighbors aid to buy more military hardware too, whether they have the same drug problems or not, until there's a balance of power restored. It's conservative mandated spending, and really spending driven by the DEA, but it gets blamed on the 'liberals', since it goes on the books as foreign aid, and 'everyone knows' that's them bleeding heart do-gooder types.
Education? No Child Left Behind is a conservative program. How much did it add to government controls and the tax and spend mentality? Has it worked?
Why are there now 17 federal agencies where there are firearms carrying agents (and yes that excludes the military)? Are liberals the ones giving out more guns to BATF, DEA, Dept. of the Interior, and so on, and how does that fit with getting government out of our lives?
Who is John Cabal?
Liberals want to be liberal with conservative's money, and conservative with liberal's money.
Conservatives want to be conservative with conservative's money, and liberal with liberal's money.
Every "class" or group wants to spend more of other peoples' money, and less of their own, and they all have rationalizations to justify their individual positions.
Me, I'm a true egalitarian - I want to spend EVERYONE's money! :-p