Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme

Bernie Madoff, son of Ralph and Sylvia Madoff, grew up in a modest three-bedroom home in Laurelton, a small middle class area outside of Queens, New York. Little is known about Bernie’s parents, except each had one or more issues with the government. Ralph, had a tax debt in excess of $13,000, placing a lien on his home, assessed in 1956 and not paid until 1965. Sylvia was part of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proceedings in 1963 to determine if broker-dealers of Gibralter Securities failed to report financial conditions, which could revoke their registrations. However, in 1964, the SEC dismissed the proceedings with what appeared to be a deal for these identified individuals to stay out of the business.

This paper will provide an overview of the Bernie Madoff investment fraud, a Ponzi scheme that continues to affect the lives of the individuals Madoff defrauded under the screen of a legitimate investment firm. It will argue that the signs of the Madoff fraud were obvious and that a combination of a lack of regulatory oversight and incompetence allowed Madoff's chicanery to continue, even longer than Madoff himself thought possible. However, this does not excuse individual investors from taking responsibility for their willful blindness to Madoff's improbably high returns.

Most people, when they hear the word “crime,” think about street crime or violent crime such as murder, rape, theft, or drugs. However, there is another type of crime that has cost people their life savings, investors’ billions of dollars, and has had significant impacts of multiple lives; it is called white collar crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines white collar crime as

During a 1992 interview with The Wall Street Journal, he discussed his “methods”. During this interview he described how, in the 1970’s, he had invested funds in large market capitalization stocks with a promised return of investment of eighteen to twenty percent. He also described how in 1982, he started using futures contracts on the stock index and placed put options on futures during the stock market crash of 1987. Several analysts performing due diligence were unable to replicate the returns Madoff’s firm had using historic price data for United States stocks and the options on the indexes. It was speculated that Madoff’s returns were most likely earned by front running his firm’s brokerage clients.

Bernard Madoff had full control of the organizational leadership of Bernard Madoff Investments Securities LLC. Madoff used charisma to convince his friends, members of elite groups, and his employees to believe in him. He tricked his clients into believing that they were investing in something special. He would often turn potential investors down, which helped Bernard in targeting the investors with more money to invest. Bernard Madoff created a system which promised high returns in the short term and was nothing but the Ponzi scheme. The system’s idea relied on funds from the new investors to pay misrepresented and extremely high returns to existing investors. He was doing this for years; convincing wealthy individuals and charities to

After the stock market crash of 2008, Madoff was no longer able to keep the scam going, and eventually turned himself in. Madoff did an amazing job at hiding this scam from almost everyone, even his family.

In this case of Madoff, he started an investment scheme where people invested in the scheme and were promised returns which were higher at a short period of time. Due to the high returns within a short period, many people invested in the scheme where at first he paid them returns as expected but after a time, he diverted investor’s money to make payments to earlier investors and also to himself (McDermott, M. A. (1998). He later disappeared with the investor’s money before they even realized.

This paper introduces Bernard L. Madoff a fraudster who orchestrated a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme. The paper discusses elements that make up a Ponzi scheme and explains what a Ponzi scheme is. The paper goes on to introduce some of the victim’s and examines some reasons why someone might fall victim to a Ponzi scheme. The paper describes the three elements making up the fraud triangle and how they relate to the fraud and the fraudster. This paper covers Bernard Madoff’s background and history and how he committed the fraud analyzing the fraud triangle. The paper describes ways to correct the issue, accounting principles violated, and recommendations for a fix. Finally, the paper looks at internal and external controls violated and ends with a conclusion.

A Ponzi scheme is an illegal business practice in which new investor’s money is used to make payments to earlier investors. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity. The returns are repaid out of new investors’ principal, but not from profits. This can continue as long as new investors line up with cash, and old investors don’t try to withdraw too much of their money at once.

I am baffled as to how long Bernard Lawrence Madoff’s Ponzi scheme lasted. He started Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in the summer of 1960, and did not get caught until he turned himself in on December 10, 2008. There are several things he did to keep himself from getting caught, and several things that could have been done to figure out something odd was happening. Two major points aside from the questions that I’m doing to dive into are that Friehling was not independent and the SEC should have looked into Markopolo’s accusations.

But Madoff became famous for a very different reason on December 10, 2008. After the investor informed his sons that he planned to give out several million dollars in bonuses two months earlier than scheduled, they demanded to know where the money was coming from. Madoff then admitted that a branch of his firm was actually an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Madoff's sons reported their father to federal authorities, and the next day Madoff was arrested and charged with securities fraud.

In the 1960s a man names Bernard L. Madoff founded a small firm called Bernard L. Madoff Securities LLC. In 1980 Madoff launched his firm with the $5000 that he had saved from his previous summer jobs. His firm was ranked with some of the most powerful firms on Wall Street. Madoff started off as a single stock trader before he turned it into a family business. Madoff had also created “an investment- advisory business that managed money for high- net- worth individuals, hedge funds, and other institutions (Weiss, J.). For over 10 years Madoff decided to run a scam on everyone that invested in his company.

This report allows the facts to be known concerning the still mysterious case of Bernard L. Madoff and his longtime investment securities activities, which eventually turned into an enormous fraud of incomparable size. In this report, you will begin to understand how Bernard Madoff was able to execute such an elaborate fraud. The illegal business behavior found in this case is too numerous to count however, quite a few will be identified. In addition, the roles of the perpetrators, accomplices, and their involvement in this scheme will be made known. This fraud had such an enormous impact on the victims, we will examine several implementations that the private investors could have implemented to protect themselves. An

Madoff offered modest and steady returns to exclusive clients instead of offering high returns to all clients, giving the appearance of his firm to be exclusive. The firm’s annual returns were abnormally consistent, a key factor in achieving the fraud.7 Most business men believed the story that a single person could generate returns of 12 to 13 percent a year trading the stock market no matter what happens without a single down quarter.7 Some of these people applied for membership to the clubs that Madoff was a member of, in order to meet and be accepted by him. In addition, he never hustled anyone for investing with him; instead he let them come to him. Thus, he created this aura of exclusivity around him and everyone wanted to be a part of his club.

The most famous Ponzi scheme, and which gave rise to the term, involved Charles Ponzi’s sale of international reply coupons to be reimbursed for postage stamps (Grossman, 2012). Like other schemes, Ponzi paid off investors with proceeds generated from newer investors. Ponzi’s scheme is notable because it not only lost investor funds but also brought down six banks. However, this scheme was relatively small compared to the one launched by Allen Stanford, which defrauded investors of more than $7 billion, compared to Ponzi’s $20 million.