Ponzi Scheme

Introduction: Bernie Madoff was a well-respected financier, his company Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC was very well known and even helped launch the Nasdaq stock market. Madoffs company was well trusted and he even had celebrity cliental such a Steven Spielberg, Kevin bacon, and Kyra Sedgwick. Madoff came from a low income family however, he was able to start his company from getting a $50,000 loan from his in-laws and he using money that he had saved from side jobs such as lifeguarding and installing sprinkler systems to found his company. The successfulness of Madoff’s company came from the company’s ability to adapt to change and us modern day computer technology. As his business grew he stated employing family members to help “His younger brother, Peter, joined him in the business in 1970 and became the firm 's chief compliance officer. Later, Madoff 's sons, Andrew and Mark, also worked for the company as traders. Peter 's daughter, Shana, became a rules-compliance lawyer for the trading division of her uncle 's firm, and his son, Roger, joined the firm before his death in 2006”(Bernard Madoff Biography 2016) Unfortunately on December 11th 2008 Bernie Madoff became well known for a whole new reason. He had been accused of performing an elaborate Ponzi scheme and he had been reported to the federal authorities by his own sons. A year later he admitted to the investigators that he had lost $50 billion dollars of his investors’ money and pled guilty to 11

Bernie Madoff continued his scheme for thirty years because his company was the largest market maker on NASDAQ. He had an impressive rate of returns that his firm earned annually, and the Securities and Exchange Commission did not oversee the stock market and protect investors. Madoff also had flawless credentials. His scheme was so clever that he knew he could only aim toward the investors

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.

Facts: In November 2008, the parties signed an employment agreement providing that Relator was to serve as the director of the school for the 2008-09 school year. The title of the agreement states the dates July 01/2008-June 30/2009. "The first sentence of the agreement lists the administrative positions to which the agreement applies and states, "This is a general at will agreement."(Ellis vs. BlueSky, 2010). Yet the agreement provides that "[p]ositions will automatically

Convictions of the Bernie Madoff conspirators prove the Ponzi scheme could not have been the work of one person. Furthermore, the conspirators each played a critical role in facilitating the Ponzi scheme and concealing it from regulators, and auditors. For instance, Annette Bongiorno, was employed for Madoff for approximately 40 years as his secretary (Lappin, 2014). Consequently, Bongiorno was charged with manufacturing the false statements sent to clients that indicated they were worth a lot more than they actually were. Moreover, Bongiorno transferred $50 million of client’s funds into her own private account (Lappin, 2014).

This book brought out the failures of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in America’s history, as orchestrated by Bernie Madoff. Harry Markopolos caught up with Madoff’s Ponzi scheme earlier on in his career and saw all the red flags. There was no explanation of the continuous one percent yield in over forty five stocks that Madoff dealt with. Madoff took advantage of the laxity by the SEC officials in failing to follow up complains with an investigation, and the trust

Looking back it’s easy to see the mistakes made by the investors of Bernard Madoff, how he got the rich and famous to foolishly invest their money with very little or no due diligence. He made the return of 10 to 12 percent annually look so good that investors begged to be included. Who wanted want to be a part of the impenetrable financial products or the better than average returns offered by Mr. Madoff. Sadly, if investors had

He used his investors money to pay for many personal and family expenses. He also withdrew money from these accounts to run his scam. By shuffling the money between his New York business to his London business and then back to his New York business, it made it look as if the New York business was actually operating as a investment advisory business. Mr. Madoff concealed this from his investors.

Fraud in the financial community is consistently hidden in "style." Since its beginnings in the "great depression," to now, "the great recession" fraud has undoubtedly taking many forms and styles. Subsequently, many non suspecting patrons have been severely damaged as result of this greed and corruption. Many of America's largest and most established individuals are not exempt from this form of style manipulation. As we will soon see, many individuals, including Bernie Madoff, have both the ability and incentive to commit fraud. In today's fast paced information age, fraudulent activities are now becoming more difficult to detect, and even more difficult to prove. To begin, I believe it necessary to show how fraud has affected our current economic state. I will then venture as to the means in which Bernie Madoff committed fraud and the implications on current business prospects.

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

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

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.

The illegal construction of the Bernie Madoff securities pyramid scheme grew to preposterous proportions from legal, auditing, and regulatory weaknesses of the Securities Exchange Commission, the designated regulatory body of the U.S. financial markets. The required expertise, authority, and relevant penalties needed to deter management from committing ethical breaches lacked substance in the case study of BMIS (Crews 11). Even after the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals that occurred in the early 2000s, the SEC unexplainably revoked provisions created to help avoid fraud. The provision the SEC revoked specifically mandated firms structured like Madoff’s to be audited by accounting firms registered and audited by the Board. By revoking the provision, BMIS was allowed to continue its Ponzi scheme for another half a decade with the aid of utilizing an unregistered, small accounting firm called Freihling & Horowitz (“Madoff’s Jenga”

The role accounting firms played in the last financial crisis raised questions about the legitimacy of auditing and assurance services. Auditors, who are considered independent and are supposed to provide reliable information to financial statement users, played a major part in the financial institutions’ crisis. The role of auditing is not to stop management from making poor business decisions, but it is to make sure that those decisions are properly disclosed (Rapoport, 2010). However, auditors failed to fulfill that role while auditing some of the largest financial institutions, which led to a huge financial meltdown during the first decade of the 21st Century. As a result of the financial crisis, questions regarding the