A Ponzi Scheme Of Excess Of $ 1.2 Billion Dollars

Bernie Madoff began his career as an investment broker in 1960, where he legally bought and sold over-the-counter stocks not listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). From the 1960’s through the 1990’s, Madoff’s success and business grew substantially, mainly from a closed circle of known investors and friends through word of mouth. In the 1990’s Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities traded up to 10 percent of the NASDAQ on any given day. With the success of the securities business, Madoff started an illegal money-management business, promising his investors consistent returns from 10-12 percent, unheard of returns at the time, which should have tipped off most investors that something was amiss.

Describe a Ponzi scheme. Find several examples of other Ponzi schemes that have occurred in recent years.

In December 2008, one of the largest Ponzi scheme surfaced when Mark and Andrew Madoff reported the works of their father, Bernard Madoff to the federal authorities. A Ponzi scheme is an investing scam that promises high rates of return with little risk to investors. The operator generates returns for older investors by gaining new investors. Bernard was arrested on December 11, 2008 and charged with securities fraud. He pled guilty to 11 counts and was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison-the maximum possible prison sentence. A reported $17.3 billion was invested into the scam by Bernie’s clients and only about $2.48 billion have been returned to these victims as of September 2012.

In the 1960s Bernie Madoff was hard worker known for creating one of the largest buying/selling market in NASDAQ. He rose from a penny stock trader to becoming a stockbroker, financial advisor, then chairman of the NADDAQ. But, from December 11, 2008 to present day, Bernie Madoff will be remember in history as the man who pull of the largest Ponzi scheme. Madoff was to make $50 billion disappear in this scheme, by using new investors’ money to pay out old investors. After numerous tips about how Madoff conducted business the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chose to investigate. The SECs investigation included searching through fabricated trading records of which no evidence was found to support the claim. It wasn’t until another

If you're vigilant and check your statements regularly, then you are probably safe. But, there are times where people may lose their entire life savings in an instant. Some people who are not educated on retirement plans or people who are getting older and they aren't up with the times may be subject to a Ponzi scheme or some other type of fraud.

Even this didn’t stop Ponzi. During this time Ponzi and his wife moved to Jacksonville Florida and began a new scam. This time it was land. He borrowed money from friends. Opened a company called Chatpon Land Syndicate. Which play on the name Charles Ponzi. He began to buy up cheap land in Jacksonville. Most of it swampland, and began selling of lots for nearly 500% profit. (Zuckoff, 2005) When Florida found out who he was Massachusetts and Florida teamed up to shut him down again. He was then sentenced to one year in jail for violating securities laws.

Life is simply a game, a game played by billions of people every day. Just like any other game some players play by the rules and others choose not to. Some players go to work every day to earn money whereas some cheat and find alternatives to working hard to become wealthy. Majority of these cheaters play money making schemes on those who have worked hard and countless hours for their money. There have been many people affected by countless amounts of schemes in the past. A conspiracy in particular that has destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands is a scheme known as the Ponzi scheme. Named after Charlie Ponzi, it was first used in the year of 1919 by Ponzi himself. Charlie, who is now nicknamed the father of the Ponzi scheme, was thirty-seven at the time and was successful in

Allen Stanford’s Ponzi scheme is considered to be one of the top grossing Ponzi schemes that have been at the forefront of white collar crime. As stated on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website, “a Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to earlier investors by the contribution of new investors that promises to generate high returns with little or no risk” (Sec.gov). These schemes take advantage of people who put their faith in the offender out of trust or any other personal reason and in the case of Allen Stanford it is no different.

This is why it is important for individuals to try and detect the signs of fraud to avoid losing all of one’s wealth. Auditors and Regulators have not always detected fraud cases of either Ponzi or illegal pyramid structures until it is too late. Not only will individuals want to make returns, but withdraw the profit that was made from the investment. In the Madoff case of 2008, it was up to a whistleblower, Harry Markopolos, to uncover the massive fraud Enterprise Bernie Madoff had constructed. In a story detailing the case Hickery writes. “He reported Madoff's behavior to the SEC five times in eight years. Regulators either ignored or flubbed every opportunity to unmask his Ponzi scheme. In the end it was only uncovered when Madoff confessed to his sons and was handed over to the authorities as the inevitable mathematics of financial entropy caught up with a scheme that was worth US$65 billion by the end of 2008” (Hickery, 2013). This is an example, of how the government unable to protect the victims nor able to catch Bernie after years of false documentation. The laws detailing pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing schemes make it just as difficult to detect and convict organizations before the damage is

It is almost impossible to conclude or prevent individuals from being unethical, especially when billions of dollars are being transferred daily. Furthermore, people seem to always find a way to maneuver around standards and regulations when money is involved. Also, the continuous creation of new technology allows people with the mindset of a Madoff the ability to avoid detection from his or her criminal behavior for some time. Without the help of federal regulators, a person like Madoff should not have had the opportunity to run a Ponzi scheme of this magnitude for so long. Moreover, federal regulators of the SEC were created to protect investors and these investors depend on the system developed by the SEC to uncover fraudulent behavior in a timely manner. “Madoff had attracted a wide following because he delivered consistently high returns with very low volatility over a long period. He claimed to use a split-strike conversion strategy to obtain these low-risk returns” (Bernard, & Boyle, 2009, p. 62).

When the financial crisis of 2008 struck the world, there were multiple business scams and schemes that became exposed, creating a colossal uproar and unrest around the world. When the stock market collapsed, people all across America took a hit, with 2.4 trillion dollars of the Americans people’s savings vanishing in just a few weeks. This financial crisis also brought to light an unprecedented amount of fraud, over exposing people who were cutting corners. One of the most famous scams that surfaced in late 2008 was operated and executed by Bernard Madoff, in which he perpetrated the largest Ponzi scam in American history. A Ponzi scheme is a simple swindle where by one set of investors are paid unreal returns out of money received from another investor. A Ponzi scheme is however always disaster prone from the beginning as there is never a strategy to wholly recoup investors money.

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.

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.

The individuals and companies who engaged in the $40 million Black Diamond Ponzi Scheme did it for selfish reasons. According to the United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Attorney Tompkins stated “What makes this case particularly troubling is that from the beginning, this defendant had no intention of investing a single dime of the victims’ money…Simmons made slick presentations to his victims about lucrative investment returns that were filled with lies and deceit. Simmons was a con artist who pocketed people’s savings to finance his own lavish lifestyle and went to great lengths to cover up his crimes. The impact of Simmons’ fraud has been devastating to his victims, who trusted him with their hard-earned

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