The Madoff scandal is one of the low points in the history of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Every Congressional hearing or SEC-basher inevitably uses the failure to catch Madoff as evidence of the ineffectiveness of the SEC. In a continuing journey down the rabbit hole, the SEC’s Inspector General David Kotz released his 123-page [...]
Tag Archives: Madoff
Is Madoff a Sociopath?
The New York magazine interview with Bernie Madoff has finally been published. Steve Fishman spoke with Madoff on the phone (collect calls from Madoff’s prison) for several hours. And so, sitting alone with his therapist, in the prison khakis he irons himself, he seeks reassurance. “Everybody on the outside kept claiming I was a sociopath,” [...]
Save Your Company, Save Yourself
What happens when you have a business disaster on your resume? Maybe listing an Enron or WorldCom would not be so bad. Those companies are big enough that you may not be tainted by the corporate fraud. Unless you ended up in handcuffs. As the company gets smaller, you’re more likely to get caught in [...]
The New Face of Evil?
His crime was simple: collect money from investors, fake the returns, pocket the money, and repeat. His crime was the biggest: $20 billion in cash plus $45 billion of fake returns. Should Bernie Madoff be the new name for evil? Christine Hurt of University of Illinois College of Law contrasts Madoff with the original Ponzi [...]
Dealing with Losses From the Madoff Fraud
One of the many repercussions of the Madoff fraud is how to treat investors who had money in his Ponzi scheme. There has been plenty written about how the trustee is treating the direct investors. He is only treating net cash. If you took out more cash than you put in, you are on the [...]
Madoff Losses Down from $65 Billion to $20 Billion
How do you value fraud? When the Madoff ponzi scheme collapsed the claim was that there was $65 billion in losses. That was the total dollar value on the account statements given to investors. Of course, that number was fictional because there were not real assets behind those numbers. The trustee overseeing the liquidation of [...]
Another Charge in Madoff Fraud
The SEC has charged Daniel Bonventre, Madoff’s Director of Operations, with securities fraud. “According to the SEC’s complaint, Bonventre was responsible for the firm’s general ledger and financial statements that were materially misstated because they did not reflect the manner in which investor funds were maintained and used. Bonventure ensured that BMIS financial reports did [...]
The SEC is Going After the Geeks
First, Bernie the boss turned himself in, saying he did it all by himself. Nobody believed that, including the SEC. So the SEC went after Madoff’s right-hand man, DiPascali, and Madoff’s accountant, Friehling. Now the SEC is going after the geeks. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged two computer programmers for their role in helping [...]
How Did Madoff Go Bad?
Last Friday, the SEC published the exhibits for Investigation of Failure of the SEC to Uncover Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme (Report No. OIG-509). That was 536 separate exhibits tying to fill in the background on what happened with the SEC and Madoff. The one that caught my eye was exhibit 104 that summarized a June [...]
SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations Gets a Review
The SEC’s Division of Enforcement was not alone in getting a report from the SEC’s Inspector General: Improvements Needed Within the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. The Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations also got a review from the Inspector General: Review and Analysis of OCIE Examinations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC. For this [...]
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