Quoted Text

Bernard Madoff arrested over alleged $50 billion fraud

By Edith Honan
40 mins ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bernard Madoff, a long-time fixture and powerful adviser on Wall Street, was arrested and charged on Thursday with allegedly running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, U.S. authorities said.
The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market who remains a member of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc's nominating committee, is best known as the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the closely-held market-making firm he founded in 1960.
But the alleged fraud involved a hedge fund he ran from a separate floor of the building where his brokerage is based.
Madoff told senior employees of his firm on Wednesday that "it's all just one big lie" and that it was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme," with estimated investor losses of about $50 billion, according to a criminal complaint against him.
A Ponzi scheme is a pyramid-type swindle in which very high returns are promised to early investors, who are paid off with money put up by later ones.
The $50 billion allegedly lost to investors would make Madoff's fund one of the biggest frauds in history. When Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, one of the largest at the time, it had $63.4 billion in assets.
Prosecutors charged Madoff, 70, with a single count of securities fraud. They said he faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 million.
"Madoff stated that the business was insolvent, and that it had been for years," Lev Dassin, acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.
Authorities said that, according to a document filed by Madoff with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on January 7, 2008, Madoff's investment advisory business served between 11 and 25 clients and had a total of about $17.1 billion in assets under management.
'UNFORTUNATE SET OF EVENTS'
"Bernard Madoff is a longstanding leader in the financial services industry," his lawyer Dan Horwitz told reporters outside a downtown Manhattan courtroom where he was charged. "We will fight to get through this unfortunate set of events."
A shaken Madoff stared at the ground as reporters peppered him with questions. He was released after posting a $10 million bond secured by his Manhattan apartment.
The SEC filed separate civil charges.
"Our complaint alleges a stunning fraud -- both in terms of scope and duration," said Scott Friestad, the SEC's deputy enforcer. "We are moving quickly and decisively to stop the scheme and protect the remaining assets for investors."
The SEC said it appeared that virtually all of the assets of his hedge fund business were missing.
Madoff had long kept the financial statements for his hedge fund business under "lock and key," according to prosecutors, and was "cryptic" about the firm.
Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities has more than $700 million in ..........................................................http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081212/bs_nm/us_madoff_arrest

He must be the first.....I wonder when #2, #3 and #4 etc will be showing up........??????????????????????????????

Quoted Text

Madoff case raises questions about lax oversight by SEC
The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Financial wizard Bernard L. Madoff didn’t just fool investors. He also conned the nation’s top securities regulators, who investigated his business last year and apparently missed the fact that he was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
    It wasn’t the first time the Securities and Exchange Commission overlooked clear warning signs of possible fraud.
    “I can’t comprehend how a well-run investigation would have missed a fraud of this magnitude,” said Lynn Turner, a former SEC chief accountant.
    Another expert agreed. “The fact that this could go on for so long with someone who was known to the agency raises questions of the effectiveness of our regulatory scheme,” said Charles Elson, the director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
    The SEC’s enforcement division looked into Madoff’s business in 2007. The agency did not refer the matter to commissioners for legal action. What did the investigators find and why didn’t they look harder? The SEC isn’t saying anything beyond a brief statement it issued Friday revealing the 2007 probe.
    Securities law experts point to Madoff’s written assertion to the SEC that he had 23 clients.
    Demonstrably false, the experts say. Look at the dozens of well-heeled victims now strewn across the financial landscape. They include a charity of movie director Steven Spielberg; the family charitable foundation for Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.; and a trust tied to real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman.
    “One would think this would not have required a great deal of investigation,” said Stanley Grossman, a veteran securities lawyer for plaintiffs who expects to represent many of the victims in the Madoff case.
    Was the government’s watchdog over Wall Street a lapdog? The SEC — the chief federal regulator protecting investors — has faced such charges before. Its oversight of the Wall Street investment houses — rotting within from piled-up securities tied to subprime mortgages — drew significant criticism. A review by the SEC inspector general determined that the agency’s monitoring of the five biggest Wall Street firms, which included Bear Stearns, was lacking.
    In March, a few days before Bear Stearns nearly collapsed into bankruptcy, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told reporters the agency was closely monitoring the fi ve fi rms and had “a good deal of comfort” in their capital levels. Then as federal officials orchestrated the rescue, Bear Stearns was bought by rival JPMorgan Chase with a $29 billion government backstop.
    The chairman of the Senate Banking panel that oversees the SEC, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in an interview Tuesday that the Madoff affair “illustrates the lack of credible enforcement over several years by the SEC.” He criticized the agency’s “lack of a strong commitment to be vigilant.”
    Cox responds that his agency has taken decisive actions in response to the market turmoil, including an unprecedented temporary ban this fall on short-selling of stocks of financial companies. The SEC also has procured billions of dollars in settlements with big investment banks that have agreed to buy back auction-rate securities from investors hurt by the collapse of that market in February.
    Auction rate securities are debt instruments, typically issued by a municipality, in which the yield is reset on each payment date via a Dutch auction, a method of selling in which the price is reduced until a buyer is found.
    In the Madoff case a securities executive, Harry Markopolos, complained to the SEC’s Boston office in May 1999. Markopolos told the SEC staff they should investigate Madoff because it was impossible for the kind of profit he was making to have been gained legally.
    But the SEC’s Boston office has itself been accused in the past of brushing off a whistleblower’s legitimate complaints, in a case that led the head of that office to resign in 2003. The whistleblower, Peter Scannell, eventually persuaded state regulators and the SEC to act against mutual fund giant Putnam Investments, where...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00602

LAX OVERSIGHT.....that is the phrase applied?.....I'm sorry, but if wallstreet is sooooooooooooooooooooooo important to bailout and bailout and
bailout etc......there is no lax oversight.......there is the who knows knows and the who knows who and zooms whom etc..................

liars liars liars,,,pants on fire.......please go a-whoring elsewhere.....we cant afford your high class hotel rooms and little flings...........

gentle words used here if you ask me.....why? It's systemic like a blood cancer........

Quoted Text

Disgraced financier confined to mansion
BY LARRY NEUMEISTER The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — Facing a growing chorus of angry investors, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff lost his right to leave his home Friday and was ordered to hire private around-the-clock security guards to protect him.
    U.S. Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz approved the revised bail conditions after prosecutors sent a letter requesting them earlier in the day. The letter, signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc O. Litt, did not explain why the bail conditions needed to be tightened.
    Madoff, 70, a former Nasdaq stock market chairman, has become one of the most vilified people in America since word broke last week that he allegedly plundered $50 billion from investors.
    The changes eliminated a curfew established this week that allowed Madoff to leave his Manhattan apartment during the day. Now, he will be confined to his apartment at all times, except for court appearances.
    The order calls for Madoff’s wife to pay for a security firm to provide 24-hour video monitoring of Madoff’s apartment doors.
    “The security firm will provide additional guards available on request if necessary to prevent harm or flight,” the order said. Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, said the order “speaks for itself.”
    Madoff’s bail conditions have been gradually increased as angry investors who ................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar01403

He probably has cancer and decided to be the lamb for the system and the government....why not???? Everyone will be staring at him and what happens
to him,,,and meanwhile there are a horde of them just like him packing their bags and moving out.......

sorry,,,,I do not believe no one knew and I dont believe there are not more and I dont believe it was outside the government machine........

they better do a better sell......

Quoted Text

You don't realize that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed."

Quoted Text

Ripples of Madoff scandal spread everywhere

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer
2 hrs 43 mins ago

NEW YORK – In the nonprofit legal center Steven Schwartz runs from a converted furniture store in Northampton, Mass., the e-mail was very good news: By week's end, a check for $243,000 would be on its way.
The money couldn't come soon enough. The sharp downturn in the economy had put Schwartz's group — working to improve treatment of teen offenders with mental illnesses — under very tight budget pressure. At least the check was a promise he could count on.
By that Thursday, though, events were unfolding 160 miles away that would upend those assumptions and assurances. In a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, a Wall Street wizard stood before a judge, charged with running a $50 billion fraud that targeted scores of wealthy and powerful investors.
The name of the accused, Bernard L. Madoff, meant nothing to Schwartz and why should it? He'd never heard of the money manager with the beachfront mansion and the 55-foot yacht. They'd certainly never met. There was no reason to think they had anything in common.
Except, it turned out, the money.
In the days since Madoff's Dec. 11 arrest, the tale has repeatedly been told of wealthy victims who, perhaps naively, invested their trust in a man who promised financial miracles.
But the scale of the Madoff scandal can just as well be measured in its still-widening ripples, reaching far-flung people and causes — from a group helping just-released inmates find jobs in Rhode Island to another working to provide fresh food in poor neighborhoods in Detroit and Oakland, Calif.
Their future is now in jeopardy — a painful reminder of the financial web linking very different worlds.
___
Signing up companies for office space in Manhattan skyscrapers made Norman F. Levy a very rich man.
In the hotly competitive but tight-knit world of New York commercial real estate, Levy worked across more than seven decades brokering leases in midtown's towers. When he died in 2005 at 93, he was hailed as an elder statesman of the trade whose zest for the deal was matched by his generosity with both friendship and money.
"Your spirit and love of life have touched and changed all who knew you," one friend of 40 years wrote in a paid death notice for Levy that ran in The New York Times. "You taught me so much. I'll cherish our relationship forever."
The friend was Bernard Madoff.
The real estate broker and the money manager were separated by 26 years, but they and their families had formed a friendship reinforced by shared interests, social circles — and trust.
Levy and Madoff were active in some of the same organizations, like New York's Yeshiva University. They donated their money to many of the same causes — groups including the Lincoln Center Theater and Gift of Life, a South Florida charity that tries to save Jewish leukemia victims by matching them with bone marrow donors.
In the summer, both families headed to the Hamptons. When Norman F. Levy died, he was staying at his daughter's house fronting the Atlantic in Montauk, just a few sprawling lots away from the mansion owned by the Madoffs.
For more than 30 years, the Levys also entrusted their personal investments to Madoff. When they chartered the Betty and Norman F. Levy Foundation — which reported assets last year of $244.4 million — as the vehicle for their charitable giving, they again put their trust in their longtime friend.
"My father believed in Bernie Madoff," Norman Levy's son, Francis — who declined to comment for this article — said in a recent interview with FOX Business News. "The one thing he said about Bernie (was), "If there's one honorable person, it's Bernie."
___
Francis Levy, a novelist, and his sister, Jeanne Levy Church, had no reason to think otherwise.
When Norman Levy died, they took the helm of the family philanthropy, leaving the funds invested with Madoff, whose offices were housed in the same Third Avenue tower as the foundation.
The Levy Foundation continued donations to longtime favorite charities. But its biggest checks went to a new set of organizations created by Norman Levy's children to champion causes they embraced.
In 2000, Jeanne set up the JEHT Foundation, whose name is an acronym for Justice, Equality, Human dignity and Tolerance — originally to work on criminal justice reform, an area where funds are scarce. Last year, the Levy family financed JEHT to the tune of $29.9 million.
Levy Church, and her husband, Kenneth, "felt that they were fortunate in their life to have this remarkable amount of money and they felt they wanted to use it for less fortunate people," said Robert Crane, president of the JEHT Foundation.
Francis Levy co-founded the Philoctetes Center, a group dedicated to fostering discussions of everything from literature to economics. In 2007, the Levy Foundation financed Philoctetes with $950,000. Last year, Francis Levy invited his family's longtime friend, Madoff, to appear on a panel at the center to talk about the workings of Wall Street.
More recently, the Levy Churches formed another group, the Fair Food Foundation, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., which set out to find ways to get fresher, healthy food to residents of poor city neighborhoods starting with Detroit and Oakland, Calif.
None of the Levys' foundations are well-known to the general public. But they got an enthusiastic reception from groups across the country that were hungry for funding.
At the walk-in counseling office run by Rhode Island Family Life Center in a poor neighborhood in South Providence, a JEHT grant of $500,000 over two years paid staffers who help inmates just released from prison find housing and jobs. In 2007, the group provided services to 1,000 people.
A New Orleans group, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, used a grant from JEHT to pursue a lawsuit charging "environmental racism" in the predominantly black Louisiana town of Mossville, where the soil and water are polluted by 14 surrounding factories.
And in Schwartz's program in Massachusetts, JEHT offered a three-year grant for work in Connecticut, Texas, Alabama and elsewhere to get states to reconsider treatment of teen offenders with mental health problems, encouraging them to send some home with therapy or provide it in detention centers.
The JEHT grant accounted for 26 percent of the Center for Public Representation's annual budget. Its importance became even more clear this fall when a state tax on real estate transactions that provides nearly as much of the group's funding dropped sharply with the collapse of the housing market, Schwartz said.
Still, Schwartz's staff of 11 was so certain of JEHT's backing that they moved ahead with new projects, spending about $25,000 in advance.
"We just trusted that we would get the money, and so rather than suspend the work until the check was in hand ... we do the work and expected the check will follow," Schwartz said.
___
Crane, the director of the JEHT Foundation, was working late that Thursday evening when his cell phone rang. His benefactors, Jeanne and Kenneth Levy Church, were on the line.
"Are you sitting down?" they asked.
The couple told him they'd just come across a story online about the arrest of a New York money manager whose name soundly vaguely familiar to Crane. All the Levy Church's money was invested with Bernie Madoff. If it was gone, so was the foundation.
On Monday morning Crane sent an e-mail to people at nearly 150 groups around the country that count on his foundation for $25 to $30 million in funding each year. The checks they had been expecting would not be coming, he told them, and JEHT would close by the end of January.
Francis Levy's group, the Philoctetes Center, also announced it could not continue without a cash infusion. The Fair Food Foundation, announced it would close, delivering what its president, Oran Hesterman called "a stinging blow" to activists working to improve nutrition in poor neighborhoods.
Leaders of some of the groups funded by the foundations said they had not even been aware that their money came from the Levy family. Nor had they ever heard of Madoff.
Some groups, like the Rhode Island center that finds jobs and housing for former inmates, were relatively lucky. JEHT provides a third of its annual budget, but the check for 2009 had already been cashed. The impact will become clear next year when the group tries to replace that money in an economy that has made fundraising increasingly difficult, Executive Director Sol Rodriguez said.
For others, the impact was immediate. Between the JEHT closure and the drop in tax revenues, Schwartz's group has seen 48 percent of its budget vanish. On Wednesday, he called an emergency meeting with his staff. They've put juvenile justice projects in Texas and Alabama on hold. But those are emergency measures, not a solution.
"We don't have any ..............http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081220/ap_on_re_us/ripples_of_a_fraud

This guy should be locked up for life!

Madoff is nothing more than a common white collar thief and should be treated like one.

Quoted from Shadow

Madoff is nothing more than a common white collar thief and should be treated like one.

So,,,do you think no one really knew? or do think they chose not to know?.....do you think he is the only lamb??

Quoted Text

Investor who lost $1.4B to Madoff kills himself
Investor who lost more than $1 billion in Madoff scandal commits suicide in Manhattan office

By ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press
Last updated: 7:15 a.m., Wednesday, December 24, 2008

NEW YORK -- He was a distinguished investor who traced his lineage to the French aristocracy, hobnobbed with members of European high society and sailed around the world on fancy yachts.
     
But after losing more than $1 billion of his clients' money to Bernard Madoff, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet had enough. He locked the door of his Madison Avenue office and apparently swallowed sleeping pills and slashed his wrists with a box cutter, police said.

A security guard found his body Tuesday morning, next to a garbage can placed to catch the blood.

The bloody scene marked a grisly turn in the Madoff scandal in which money managers and investors were ensnared in an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. De la Villehuchet is believed to have lost about $1.4 billion to Madoff.

No suicide note was found, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

De la Villehuchet, 65, was an esteemed financier who tapped his upper-crust European connections to attract clients. It was not immediately clear how he knew Madoff or who his clients were.

He grew increasingly subdued after the Madoff scandal broke, drawing suspicion among janitors at his office Monday night when he demanded that they be out of there by 7 p.m. Less than 13 hours later, his body was found.

His death came as swindled investors began looking for ways to recoup their losses. Funds that lost big to Madoff are also facing investor lawsuits and backlash for failing to properly vet Madoff and overlooking red flags that could have steered them away. It's not immediately known what kind of scrutiny de la Villehuchet was facing over his losses.

De la Villehuchet (pronounced veel-ou-SHAY) comes from rich French lineage, with the Magon part of his name referring to one of France's most powerful families. The Magon name is even listed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, a monument commissioned by Napoleon in 1806.

"He's irreproachable," said Bill Rapavy, who was Access International's chief operating officer before founding his own firm in 2007.

De la Villehuchet's firm enlisted intermediaries with links to wealthy Europeans to garner investors. Among them was Philippe Junot, a French businessman and friend who is the former husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, and Prince Michel of Yugoslavia.

De la Villehuchet, the former chairman and chief executive of Credit Lyonnais Securities USA, was also known as a keen sailor who regularly participated in regattas and was a member of the New York Yacht Club.

He lived in an affluent suburb in Westchester County with his wife, Claudine. They have no children. There was no answer Tuesday at the family's two-story house. Phone calls to the home and de la Villehuchet's office went unanswered.

Guy Gurney, a British photographer living in Connecticut, was friends with de la Villehuchet. The two often sailed together and competed in a regatta in France in November.

"He was a very honorable man," Gurney said. "He was extraordinarily generous. He was an aristocrat but not a snob. He was a real person. When he was sailing, he was one of the boys.".................http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=753522

Dont think folks here in NYS or anywhere $$ swirls weren't aware......THEY KNEW AND KNOW........ > > > > > > >

Quoted Text

French investor lost his, family’s money
BY GREG KELLER The Associated Press

    PARIS — Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet saw his fortune and his loved ones’ money disappear along with his clients’ when he lost $1.4 billion he had invested with Bernard Madoff, the French financier’s brother said.
    Magon de la Villehuchet, 65, was found dead at his desk in New York on Tuesday, both of his wrists slashed and a bottle of pills nearby.
    His brother said Magon de La Villehuchet invested virtually all his own funds, along with money from friends and family, with Madoff, who was arrested Dec. 11 and allegedly told FBI agents he had masterminded a $50 billion fraud.
    Magon de la Villehuchet “invested his own fortune,” up to several tens of millions of dollars, his brother Bertrand Magon de la Villehuchet told The Associated Press on Friday.
    “He was totally ruined,” and so was his business partner Patrick Littaye, Bertrand said in a telephone interview from his home on Paris’ chic Place des Vosges.
    “At first he thought he’d be able to get the money back. He was very determined. Gradually he realized he wouldn’t be able to,” Bertrand said.
    “My brother was a man of simple tastes,” Bertrand said. “He was a very modest man.”
    “A lot is being said about him, like that he flew in by helicopter to his chateau — that’s not true,” said Bertrand, 74.
    An avid sailor, the younger Magon de la Villehuchet had begun investing with Madoff “three or four years ago,” his brother said.
    “He trusted Madoff completely,” Bertrand said. The two men had been introduced by Littaye, Rene-Thierry’s partner in the fund he ran, Bertrand said. Rene-Thierry raised the money he placed with Madoff from friends and family, including his brother.
    Bertrand said he’s lost 20 percent of his savings in the scam, which he said was much less than what his brother lost.
    Contrary to what some analysts say now, Bertrand said the returns on his investment with Madoff were not too good to be true.
    “Over four years my gain was 17 percent, that’s not crazy,” he said.
    The Frenchman’s fund was among the biggest losers in the Madoff fraud, and one of a handful to get taken for more than $1 billion.
    Other famous names reported to have lost their investment with Magon de la Villehuchet include L’Oreal cosmetic empire heiress Lilliane Bettencourt, listed.................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00403

This guy has set off a finacial ripple effect across the globe. I wonder what his 'white collar' punishment will be.

He will have to buy the cheap caviar.....His 'friends' will leave him.....