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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."
... and when your boss gets 150 years, get your ass to a country without an extradition treaty with the US.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
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.
Should have used perl.
Don't forget to destroy the evidence of your destruction of the evidence of the destruction of the evidence and backups and its backups and its backups.
This is going to turn into one of two things: A painting of Stephen Colbert, or an episode of Black Adder.
I'm good with either outcome, really.
... and when your boss gets 150 years, get your ass to a country without an extradition treaty with the US.
Polanski's corollary: Stay there.
any particular kind of metal you'd like the chains made from
Mercury.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
...Oh My God! Does this mean Bernie Madoff was a robot?
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