Bernie Madoff Case Study

65 billion dollars of fraud, such was the case for Bernie Madoff. Bernard Lawrence Madoff by definition from the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition is an American stockbroker, investment manager, and swindler. He is widely known for hosting the largest Ponzi scandal in US history. He not only ruined others life’s but he also ruined his own and his families. He took money from investors to pay off other investors to make it seem like they were making a profit. All he had to do was report the “gains” there were making. In reality, no money was actually being made and he was pocketing the extra money. The way he would keep his investors interested, he would tell them to continue to add more money to gain more profit. He would encourage

At this time federal prosecutors arrested long time employees of Madoff Investment Securities. They were put on trial for allegations of conspiracy of fraud. The biggest deception comes from about the time of the 1987 crash. Madoff wanted to improve his returns after the downturn. This led to his giant Ponzi scheme where he was able to accumulate vast amounts of money and offering no returns. Initially he used his other business, Madoff Investment Securities LLC. He also had “a non-social situational aspect that contributed to a gullible investment decision was, paradoxically, that Madoff promised modest rather than spectacular gains. Sophisticated investors would have been highly suspicious of a promise of gains as spectacular as those promised almost 100 years earlier by Charles Ponzi.”(Greenspan, 2008, p.28). A large part of Madoff’s success came from his realization that the large investors were looking for steady returns. Returns that are high, but not too high as to raise suspicion. Madoff was truly a master at his

His family was greatly affected by this entire ordeal. His son Mark says Tresniowski, struggled deeply with the scandal. Although he didn’t get charged with any crimes, he steal dealt with numerous lawsuits claiming he profited from this scandal. "He looked up to his dad 100 percent, as almost godlike," says Allan Klein, a friend who knew Mark since high school (Tresniowski, 2011, p. 60). "Mark was in a really dark place, and he just saw no way out” Mark could not deal with all the scandal and abruptly ended his life by hanging himself from the ceiling beam just after he emailed his