Bernie Madoff Case Summary

Case Presentation: Bernard Lawrence Madoff

“Robbing Peter to pay Paul”, Bernard Madoff king of financial fraud will be serving 150 years in prison for running his Ponzi scheme. Now why such a big price to pay for running a Ponzi scheme? Bernard Madoff also referred to as “Bernie Madoff”, was charged with committing eleven charges, including robbery of thirteen thousand five hundred and eighty of his clients. The Bernie Madoff case made waves because it brought attention to how un-educated and unprepared the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was for anything of this matter.

How did this massive collapse of the sixty-five billion dollar Ponzi Scheme even begin? Bernie Madoff saved up five thousand dollars from a job he had as a lifeguard, in nineteen sixty he opened a firm with the money he saved. The Firm helped create the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) In which he held chair from nineteen ninety through nineteen thirty. Madoff’s firm became profitable by exploiting the wealthy Jewish communities. Bernie became very involved with his Jewish fellowmen he knew at his local synagogue, where he would invite them to let him invest their money and then as the pyramid grows those men brought in men they knew to also let Madoff invest their money. He promised high rates of returns to his

The case was closed without ever opening formal investigation, due to no ‘evidence of fraud’. The SEC according to Markopolos stated that the SEC people are “…Totally untrained in finance; they’re unschooled; they’re un-credentialed. Most of them are just merely lawyers without any financial industry experience.” They were trained in checking every piece of paper perfectly and finding misdemeanors but they will miss all financial felonies that are occurring, because they never look