Mr. Madoff, 70 years old, was sent directly to jail Thursday after he pleaded guilty to 11 criminal charges and admitted to running a decades-long Ponzi scheme that bilked thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. He is expected to be sentenced in June. Attorneys for the couple had no comment.Prosecutors said they may seek more than $170 billion in forfeiture, including money and property traceable to the alleged fraud, though much of that figure represents funds deposited by investors into Mr. Madoff's fraudulent investment operation and later dispersed to other investors. About $1 billion in assets has been recovered so far by the court-appointed trustee liquidating his firm. The document didn't address whether the assets listed by Mr. Madoff made up the bulk of what had been recovered.
FD: Mr. Madoff created the largest Ponzi Scheme in history according to the press.
(How about all those Russian loses back when the Soviet Union fell and their first "stock market" collapsed? Need to check on that...)
As a Friend pointed out to me, $170 Billion and even $65 Billion might be an inflated figures ... he only took in $17-20 Billion. The larger numbers are what the "investors" are claiming are their "loses."
Did Madoff ever make their money grow?
But really, Folks, are not we all just standing on the shoulders of other great men who came before us?
Charles Ponzi (March 3, 1882 – January 18, 1949) was one of the greatest swindlers in American history. His aliases include Charles Ponei, Charles P. Bianchi, Carl and Carlo. The term "Ponzi scheme" is a widely known description of any scam that pays early investors returns from the investments of later investors. He promised clients a 50% profit within 45 days, or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in other countries and redeeming them at face value in the United States as a form of arbitrage.[1][2] Ponzi was probably inspired by the scheme of William F. Miller, a Brooklyn bookkeeper who in 1899 used the same pyramid scheme to take in $1 million.[3]
What was really lost was several philantrophic trusts...
http://jta.org/news/article/2008/12/14/1001530/madoff-scandal-rocks-jewish-philanthropic-world
Just as the reverberations of the subprime mortgage collapse are still seen as contributing to the nation's wider economic meltdown, philanthropic insiders say the fallout from Madoff's scheme could be even greater. The insiders note that Madoff and others heavily invested in his fraudulent fund were major supporters of a plethora of nonprofit organizations, served on their boards or advised those organizations on how to invest their money -- in some cases placing large sums of the groups' capital in Madoff’s hands.
Reflecting this sense that the full extent of the damage is still unclear, the executive vice president and CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York said that even though its endowments were not exposed, the organization still could be hurt if donors lost money in the scheme.
“We do not yet know the full extent of the losses that supporters of UJA-Federation and other Jewish institutions have had,” John Ruskay said. “But we have already heard that many major institutions had substantial funds invested, as did foundations. Already in the context of a very challenging economic environment this will present another significant difficulty. We don’t know yet the extent of the wreckage.”
Reports are trickling out in the national media about prominent businessmen from across the country who lost money in Madoff's scheme.
Just as the reverberations of the subprime mortgage collapse are still seen as contributing to the nation's wider economic meltdown, philanthropic insiders say the fallout from Madoff's scheme could be even greater. The insiders note that Madoff and others heavily invested in his fraudulent fund were major supporters of a plethora of nonprofit organizations, served on their boards or advised those organizations on how to invest their money -- in some cases placing large sums of the groups' capital in Madoff’s hands.
Reflecting this sense that the full extent of the damage is still unclear, the executive vice president and CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York said that even though its endowments were not exposed, the organization still could be hurt if donors lost money in the scheme.
“We do not yet know the full extent of the losses that supporters of UJA-Federation and other Jewish institutions have had,” John Ruskay said. “But we have already heard that many major institutions had substantial funds invested, as did foundations. Already in the context of a very challenging economic environment this will present another significant difficulty. We don’t know yet the extent of the wreckage.”
Reports are trickling out in the national media about prominent businessmen from across the country who lost money in Madoff's scheme.
Outside were many more, and they still represented only the tip of an iceberg that is thought to comprise thousands of Madoff victims around the globe, from retirees and celebrities to some of the richest people in the world.
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