The World's Largest Ponzi Scheme

Ponzi Schemes also known as a multi-marketing organization are white-collar crime; it is essentially an individual swindling a quick investment from new investors. Always ends up with investors or victums losing “their shirt” all the profits and many cases the company and is bankrupted and the owner ends up in jail. Two very highly successful Ponzi schemes are Primerica group and Amway. Primerica Group sells insurance and financial services and Amway sells heath insurance, but it doesn’t matter what they sale, its all about recruitment. They take your hard earned money and invest it into there business for a bigger profit in the future for a retirement but many people who try to get some of there money back for emergency are sadly mistaken

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.

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).

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.

Investment fraud is a maneuver where the operator or individual, pays returns to the investors from fines paid to operators from the new investors, then from the profit earned by the operator or the individual. The Ponzi scheme was an investment fraud were financial returns were not available through traditional investors. The scheme did not invest funds from the individual victims, Ponzi paid dividends which is not a company expense: to initial investors using the funds for future investors. The white-collar offender known for the Ponzi Scheme was called Carlo Ponzi, later known as Charles Ponzi, Charles P. Bianchi, or Charles Ponzi.

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

The Ponzi scheme as a whole was very unethical. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors, not from any actual profit earned by the organization, but from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors. (Ponzi scheme, 2011) Madoff was taking investor's money and investing it into unregistered securities. When investigating these assets, they were found to be missing. This unethical act of defrauding his investors out of millions of dollars led to the charge of securities fraud.

Throughout history, the swindler has financially plagued society. Whether it is the get rich quick scheme or the carnival worker’s impossible challenge, people have been cheated out of uncountable sums of money. In the 1920’s a man named Victor Ludsig, posing as a French official, sold the Eiffel Tower to a gullible scrap ironworker for $50,000. Even today con artists are thriving using the Internet to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. This is a scheme made famous by a crook so successful that his name now graces the age-old fraud, the Ponzi scheme. Webster’s Dictionary defines

According to Investopedia.com, “A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors.” Charles Ponzi was a businessman in the early 1900s. His scheme was promising his client’s 50% return within six months. When in fact, Charles Ponzi was using later investors’ money to give back to the early investors. This financial scheme has been repeated several times since then but in smalls ways changed. The most famous in recent news is Bernie Madoff. Bernie Madoff was a hedge fund investor. As a very famous hedge fund investor, Bernie Madoff was entrusted with individuals’ entire savings (cbsnews). In return, Madoff “cooked” his books and almost always had a positive return. Only in one month out of the year did Bernie Madoff record a down month. According to a 60 minute episode, this is equivalent to a hitter in baseball hitting, .960 (cbsnews). In the end Bernie Madoff lost almost all of his investor’s life savings. So this is another case of the Ponzi except at a bigger scale. These examples prove that although one could be wealthy, they always want

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.

These types of criminal offenses are unlawful, but look upon as non-violent offenses. These Ponzi types schemes have been in existence for years, but was not well known until the late 1990’s with the fall of JP Morgan and Bennie Madoff.

As Amir Weitmann (2009) said “In fact, fraud was not so obvious. Many competent and professional investors have lost money in this case, and are very easy to say they are all inept, incompetent, or corrupt. "But it is to believe. The mechanism Madoff was a Ponzi scheme, where profitability is not paid for the assets invested but by contributing to the fund money. The technique was not financial but personal: lie and have credibility. This is what Madoff did with great skill. In addition to its long experience, perfect background and charitable donations. Bernard Madoff paid investors every year an unspectacular but respectable profitability and stable. In it he settled the evil genius of Madoff, an attraction for investors in the hope of winning and the fear of losing. However, unlike the rest of fraudsters, who did not propose too high as to arouse fear of risk performance.

One of the most notorious persons that people remember for committing one of the largest Ponzi schemes was Bernard Madoff. It was claimed that he stole over 65 billion dollars, but in actuality, he stole 20 billion dollars. His firm was responsible for making false reports claiming that they earned returns of 65 billion dollars. There is little evidence on when Bernard started his Ponzi scheme. Bernard claims that he started it in 1992 but research has showed it possible could have been started in the 60’s.