Madoff aangehouden voor fraude van 50 miljard

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Op dinsdag 16 december 2008 20:01 schreef henkway het volgende:

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ik krijg het idee dat de hele wereld, de hele wereld aan het belazeren is, met van elkaar geleend geld

[ afbeelding ]

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Op woensdag 17 december 2008 09:45 schreef hondjes het volgende:

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dat idee begin ik ook langzamerhand te krijgen...het lijkt allemaal wel een voor opgezet spel..

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Op woensdag 17 december 2008 09:42 schreef Drugshond het volgende:
Een van de betere artikels....
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Food for thought.

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This blackest of marks in investment history will forever alter the faith that investors have in investment managers, financial advisors, mutual funds, and hedge funds.

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Op woensdag 17 december 2008 10:07 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Ik hoop dat het bredere publiek nu ook begrijpt wat een Ponzi scheme is en ook gaat herkennen dat dit precies hetzelfde is als wat de overheid doet. Tijd voor jonge mensen om in opstand te komen. Tijd voor een "No, we can't !" campagne.

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Op woensdag 17 december 2008 10:53 schreef SeLang het volgende:
De enige reden waarom ik zeg dat jonge mensen in opstand zouden moeten komen is omdat vooral zij de rekening gaan betalen, niet omdat zij geinterreseerd zijn in de materie ofzo .

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Op woensdag 17 december 2008 10:53 schreef SeLang het volgende:
De enige reden waarom ik zeg dat jonge mensen in opstand zouden moeten komen is omdat vooral zij de rekening gaan betalen, niet omdat zij geinterreseerd zijn in de materie ofzo . Het is de generatie van 'huizen stijgen altijd' en 'lonen kunnen niet omlaag' en 'als je geen 5 creditcards naar de maximale limiet jaagt ben je een mietjuh'. Dus nee, ik verwacht daar inderdaad ook niets van .

Zoals ik in een ander topic al schreef is mijn benadering daarom dan ook om jezelf zoveel mogelijk onafhankelijk te maken, zorgen dat de overheid geen grip op je krijgt, en de mogelijkheid om in noodgevallen met je hele hebben en houwen binnen een paar dagen naar een ander land te kunnen vertrekken. En onder geen beding moet je (later) afhankelijk zijn van een collectieve voorziening waar de overheid (of een ander collectief) iets over te zeggen heeft.

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Op woensdag 17 december 2008 14:08 schreef TubewayDigital het volgende:
Ik wilde even kijken of de Fok-account Madoff al bestond. Dus ik voer Madoff in met een random e-mail adres en verhipt, hij bestond nog niet alleen ik kan er nu niet bij.

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Op dinsdag 16 december 2008 15:14 schreef beantherio het volgende:
Madoff legt het nog een keer uit:

Bernie Madoff on the modern stock market

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In Madoff We Trust

As the multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Wall Street insider Bernard Madoff unravels in the media spotlight, the nation is being presented with a rare opportunity to understand the true nature of many of our most cherished financial structures. Hopefully we have the wisdom to connect the dots.

Although the $50 billion loss engineered by Madoff is truly a staggering accomplishment (and was done using old-fashioned fraud rather than the mathematical wizardry that has characterized Wall Street’s recent larcenies) the size of the scheme pales in comparison to the multi-trillion dollar Ponzi structures run by the United States government. In fact, rather than looking to jail Madoff, President-elect Obama should consider making him our new Treasury secretary. If not that, at least make him the czar of something!

Madoff’s inspiration came from Charles Ponzi, the Italian-born American immigrant who promoted an investment plan in the early 1900s’ that traded postal coupons. Rather than paying investors from legitimate investment returns, Ponzi hit upon the innovative idea of paying out early investors with money collected from new investors. By creating an illusion of success, interest in his investment plan ballooned. Over time the schemes have become known by many other names, such as chain letters or pyramid schemes. They are united by the fact that they always fail in the end.

When the influx of new investors inevitably slows to the point where distributions to current investors can no longer be maintained, investors look to withdraw funds. When this happens, the entire structure falls apart. The profits received by those who “invested” early as well so any funds skimmed off by the promoter, are offset by all the losses of those who came late to the party.

To a large extent, the same concept has driven the major asset bubbles of the last decade. Given the ridiculously high valuations that were assigned to tech stocks and real estate during their respective booms, the only way the bubbles could be perpetuated was if newer “investors” could be found to pay even more outrageous prices (the greater fool). But when these new buyers balked, the whole structure crumbled. Although there was no Ponzi or Madoff to orchestrate these manias, the entire financial and economic apparatus of the country had successfully convinced the public that “investments” in tech stocks and condominiums were bullet proof and that the supply of new buyers was endless.

Unfortunately, the Ponzi economy doesn’t stop there. A chain letter is no more viable when run by governments than when run by private citizens. However, government orchestrated pyramids have the advantage of required participation. As a result, they can maintain the illusion of viability for several generations. But the longer such schemes operate the larger will be the losses when they ultimately collapse.

The Social Security Administration runs its “trust funds” with precisely the same methods used by Madoff and Ponzi. As money is collected by from current workers, the funds are then dispersed to those already receiving benefits. None of the funds collected are actually invested, so no investment returns are ever generated. Those currently paying into the system are expected to receive their returns based on the “contribution” made by future workers. This is the classic definition of a Ponzi scheme. The only difference is that Ponzi didn’t own a printing press.

The United States Government runs its own balance sheet based on the Ponzi principal as well. Our national debt always grows and never shrinks. As existing debt matures, proceeds are repaid by issuing new debt. Interest payments on existing debt are also made by selling new debt to investors. The whole scheme depends on an ever growing supply of new lenders, or the willingness of existing lenders, to continue to roll over maturing notes. Of course, as was the case with Madoff, if enough of our creditors want their money back, the music stops playing.

In Madoff’s case, the rug pulling was provided by the huge financial losses suffered by some of his clients in other non-Madoff investments. When enough of these clients looked to sell some of their apparently well-performing Madoff assets to help offset such losses, the scam collapsed. The same thing could befall the United States Government. Now that China and our other creditors are looking to spend some of their U.S. Treasury holdings to stimulate their own economies, look for a similar outcome with even more dire implications.

The main difference is that while Madoff took elaborate steps to conceal his scheme, the U.S. government operates in broad daylight. It truly is amazing how faith in government is so pervasive that many can believe that politicians will succeed where private individuals fail, and that governments are somehow immune to the economic laws that govern the rest of society. Like those unfortunate to have been duped by Madoff and Ponzi, the world is in for a rude awakening.

Peter Schiff

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Op woensdag 17 december 2008 10:53 schreef SeLang het volgende:


Zoals ik in een ander topic al schreef is mijn benadering daarom dan ook om jezelf zoveel mogelijk onafhankelijk te maken, zorgen dat de overheid geen grip op je krijgt, en de mogelijkheid om in noodgevallen met je hele hebben en houwen binnen een paar dagen naar een ander land te kunnen vertrekken. En onder geen beding moet je (later) afhankelijk zijn van een collectieve voorziening waar de overheid (of een ander collectief) iets over te zeggen heeft.

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Madoff Misled SEC in '06, Got Off

Securities and Exchange Commission investigators discovered in 2006 that Bernard Madoff had misled the agency about how he managed customer money, according to documents, yet the SEC missed an opportunity to uncover an alleged Ponzi scheme.

The documents indicate the agency had Mr. Madoff in its sights amid multiple violations that, if pursued, could have blown open his alleged multibillion-dollar scam. Instead, his firm registered as an investment adviser, at the agency's request, and the public got no word of the violations.

Harry Markopolos -- who once worked for a Madoff rival -- sparked the probe with his nearly decadelong campaign to persuade the SEC that Mr. Madoff's returns were too good to be true. In recent days, The Wall Street Journal reviewed emails, letters and other documents that Mr. Markopolos shared with the SEC over the years.


Harry Markopolos

When he first began studying Mr. Madoff's investment performance a decade ago, Mr. Markopolos told a colleague at the time, "It doesn't make any damn sense," he and the colleague recall. "This has to be a Ponzi scheme."

For Mr. Markopolos, the arrest last week of Mr. Madoff was something of a vindication after his long campaign. At a certain point, he says, "I was just the boy who cried wolf."

A lawyer for Mr. Madoff declined to comment on Mr. Markopolos's allegations.

On Jan. 4, 2006, the SEC's enforcement staff in New York opened an investigation, based on Mr. Markopolos's allegations, into whether Mr. Madoff was, in fact, running a Ponzi scheme. The SEC staff received documents from Mr. Madoff and Fairfield Greenwich, a hedge fund that placed money with Mr. Madoff on behalf of its clients. The SEC also interviewed Mr. Madoff, his assistant, an official from Fairfield Greenwich and another employee.

Among other things, the SEC found that Mr. Madoff personally "misled the examination staff about the nature of the strategy" used by the Fairfield funds and other hedge-fund accounts, and also "withheld from the examination staff information about certain of these customers' accounts," the SEC documents say.

The SEC report said that neither Mr. Madoff nor the Fairfield funds disclosed to investors in the Fairfield funds that Mr. Madoff was the investment adviser.

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Markopolos's Documents

Documents Harry Markopolos submitted to the SEC in fall 2005, making a case that Bernard Madoff's business was a Ponzi scheme.

The response Mr. Markopolos received from an SEC official in response to his case against Mr. Madoff.

An email Mr. Markopolos sent to a SEC official in April 2008.

See the SEC's case opening and closing recommendations.
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A lawyer for Fairfield couldn't be reached for comment.

The SEC report also said Mr. Madoff had violated rules requiring investment advisers to register with the SEC, which makes them subject to inspections and examinations. Investment advisers must register if they have more than 15 clients.

The staff recommended closing the investigation because Mr. Madoff agreed to register his investment-advisory business and Fairfield agreed to disclose information about Mr. Madoff to investors. The SEC report said the staff closed the case "because those violations were not so serious as to warrant an enforcement action."

Mr. Markopolos says his suspicions started in late 1999, after a colleague returned from New York with tales of Mr. Madoff's trading prowess. Whether the markets were up, or down, Mr. Madoff managed to clock in with steady gains of 12% or so a year, reportedly achieving that by trading a mix of stocks and stock-index options.

Liked the Look

Mr. Markopolos says his bosses liked the look of those returns -- and asked him why he couldn't do the same thing.

Under pressure to deliver, Mr. Markopolos and a colleague at their Boston investment outfit tried to reconstruct Mr. Madoff's purported strategy. Their results paled in comparison, and Mr. Markopolos began suspecting possible fraud.

His bosses told him to go back and check the math, given Mr. Madoff's renown as a trader.

So Mr. Markopolos turned to Daniel DiBartolomeo, a top financial mathematician in Boston. Mr. DiBartolomeo says he spent hours poring through Mr. Markopolos's data, and ultimately agreed: The strategy Mr. Madoff said he used couldn't have achieved the returns he boasted of.

'Sounds Serious'

In early 2000, Mr. Markopolos shared his explosive concerns with Edward Manion, a staff examiner at the SEC's Boston office.

In his documents, Mr. Markopolos said that there's a chance "I'm an idiot for wasting your time." But he argued forcefully that "I believe an SEC visit is warranted" to look into Mr. Madoff's practices.


Bernard Madoff, accused of running a massive investment fraud, was placed under house arrest Wednesday after a New York court hearing.

"This sounds serious," Mr. Manion told him, inviting Mr. Markopolos in for a meeting.

In May 2000, Mr. Markopolos says he sat down with Mr. Manion and an SEC attorney.

Mr. Markopolos argued his case: A key part of Mr. Madoff's strategy relied on buying and selling options on the Standard & Poor's 100-stock index. But Mr. Markopolos said his research showed there weren't enough S&P-100 options in existence at the time to support Mr. Madoff's stated strategy, given all the money he seemed to be managing. So something else must be going on.

Mr. Markopolos, a native of Erie, Pa., who had trained in "unconventional warfare," including intelligence gathering, as a reservist in the Army, says he came to "consider Madoff a domestic enemy."

Outsized Gains

In the months after the initial meeting with the SEC, Mr. Markopolos kept hearing about Madoff's outsized gains, and how the firm was growing -- sparking frequent calls to Mr. Manion to discuss the case.

Over a year passed. Then, in late 2001, Mr. Manion told Mr. Markopolos the case appeared to have fallen through the cracks. He asked Mr. Markopolos to resubmit his documents and arguments, so they could be passed on to the SEC's New York office.

Mr. Markopolos sent the documents, adding three pages arguing that the fraud was growing in size as Madoff's assets under management grew beyond $12 billion.

Mr. Markopolos also diagrammed how he believed the Madoff organization seemed to work, using a Byzantine flow chart with circles, squares, rectangles and arrows.

Mr. Markopolos continued to receive sympathetic calls from Mr. Manion. "He's the one that kept me going, I would have stopped long ago," Mr. Markopolos says.

But Mr. Manion pointed out that any investigation would have to be conducted by the New York office, where Mr. Madoff's firm was based.

Mr. Markopolos says that worried him. "I was told that the relationship between the SEC's Boston and New York offices is about as warm and cordial as the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry," Mr. Markopolos says.

Mr. Markopolos left his firm in 2004, and started a fraud-investigation practice. Mr. Markopolos's old colleagues, prodding him not to give up, spoke by phone for hours at a time about Mr. Madoff.

"Some people play fantasy sports, that was how it was with us -- Madoff was our fantasy sport," Mr. Markopolos recalls. "We wanted him nailed."

In 2005, an SEC official in Boston called to say the agency was again looking into the case, and told Mr. Markopolos to contact Meaghan Cheung, a supervisor in SEC's New York office, Mr. Markopolos recalls.

In November 2005, Mr. Markopolos sent Ms. Cheung a 21-page report outlining his concerns.

He presented a series of 29 "red flags," ranging from in-depth mathematical calculations that purported to show the Madoff investment strategy couldn't work, to little more than rumor or innuendo -- such as claims that a group of Arab investors were barred from using a major accounting firm to examine Mr. Madoff's books.

He also questioned the fact that Mr. Madoff, unlike most money managers of his stripe, didn't charge his investors a fee for handling their money. Instead, he seemed to make profits on commissions generated by the trades on investors' behalf.

"Bernie Madoff's returns aren't real," Mr. Markopolos said. "And if they are real," it's because Mr. Madoff might be engaging in "front running," or buying shares for his investors' accounts just before filling orders for other clients that have the potential to send the price higher, an illegal practice.

Mr. Markopolos's allegations against Mr. Madoff were far from bulletproof. Mr. Markopolos provided no definitive evidence of a crime. His reports were laden with frothy opinions.

In his lists of "red flags," he occasionally got things wrong. Sometimes he even misstated the starting date of his own campaign against Mr. Madoff.

Ms. Cheung was a respected attorney known for quickly bringing high-profile charges against executives of cable-television company Adelphia Communications several years earlier, after that company issued a questionable earnings report.

Mr. Markopolos thought he had a chance for his campaign to succeed.

"I had my hopes up, I thought it was a good enough package that they would go and shut this man down," Mr. Markopolos recalls.

He sent an email adding more evidence -- noting that he might be eligible for the SEC's bounty program if it turned out that Mr. Madoff was, in fact, front running.

An SEC spokesman wouldn't comment on the agency's communication with Mr. Markopolos.

In its resulting investigation, the SEC searched for evidence of "front running" but found no indications that was happening, according to an individual familiar with the matter.

Investigators also checked out Mr. Markopolos's claim that Mr. Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme. But the billions of dollars of assets held by Mr. Madoff's asset-management unit appeared to match those that various investment firms said they had placed with Madoff, suggesting that there weren't problems.

Today, it is now known that that Mr. Madoff had many more investors -- such as individuals and charities -- which weren't disclosed in regulatory filings, making it harder for investigators at that time to ascertain precisely how much money he was managing.

On Tuesday, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox also said that Madoff kept several sets of books and false documents. That, too, could have thrown off investigators a few years ago.

Rules Violations

As part of the inquiry, the SEC did find that the firm had violated technical rules about executing trades.

Early this year, Mr. Markopolos made one last major effort after receiving an email from Jonathan Sokobin, an official in the SEC's Washington, D.C., office whose job was to search for big market risks. Mr. Sokobin had heard about Mr. Markopolos and asked him to give him a call, according to an email exchange between them.

With low expectations, Mr. Markopolos got in touch. "The way I figured it," he says, "if they didn't believe you at $5 billion, and not at $10 billion, they didn't believe you at $30 billion, then why would they believe you at $50 billion?"

Funds Pulled

Mr. Markopolos also sent Mr. Sokobin an email -- with the stark subject line "$30 billion Equity Derivative Hedge Fund Fraud in New York" -- saying an unnamed Wall Street pro recently pulled money from Mr. Madoff's firm after trying to confirm trades supposedly done in his account, but discovering that no such trades had been made.

It was his last try. He never heard back about his allegations regarding Mr. Madoff.

"I felt pretty low," Mr. Markopolos recalls.

Mr. Sokobin, through an SEC spokesman, declined to comment.

Last Thursday, as Mr. Markopolos watched his children take a karate lesson near his home in Whitman, Mass., 20 miles outside Boston, he checked his voice mail, trying to ignore the noise from the children. Walking out to the foyer, Mr. Markopolos returned one of the calls, and heard an old friend tell him that Mr. Madoff had been arrested.

"I kept firing bigger and bigger bullets" at Mr. Madoff, "but I couldn't stop him," Mr. Markopolos says. With the SEC's mea culpa and Mr. Madoff's arrest, "I finally felt relief."

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Op zondag 14 december 2008 21:39 schreef beantherio het volgende:

Nog een interessant stukje uit die presentatie:

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Administrator, Registrar & Transfer Agent: Citco Fund Services (Europe) B.V.
Bank: Citco Bank Nederlands, NV
Auditors: PriceWaterhouseCoopers (Rotterdam)

Heeft dit schandaal nog gevolgen voor deze bedrijven?

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PwC onder vuur om Madoff

Accountantskantoor PriceWaterhouseCoopers wordt mogelijk aangeklaagd door één van de eigen klanten, vanwege het Madoff-schandaal.

Dat schrijft de Financial Times.

Fairfield Greenwich was één van de grootste investeerders in Bernad L. Madoff Investment Securities, het naar de eigenaar vernoemde piramidespel waarin 50 miljard dollar omging.

Aanklacht klant
Fairfield Greenwich overweegt nu huisaccountant PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) aan te klagen, omdat die de oplichting van Madoff niet detecteerde.

De verontwaardiging over de eigen accountant is groter geworden, nu blijkt dat Madoffs fonds gecontroleerd werd door een klein accountantskantoortje, bestaand uit drie mensen. Dat had PwC moeten alarmeren, vindt Fairfield Greenwich.

Piramidespel Madoff
Het fonds had ongeveer 7,5 miljard dollar van cliënten geïnvesteerd in Madoffs oplichtingsvehikel. Het is zeer onzeker of dat geld terug te halen is uit het piramidespel.

Dat is dan ook de reden waarom de gedupeerde investeringsfondsen nu hun pijlen richten op de accountantskantoren, stelt de Financial Times.

De beleggers in de investeringsfondsen willen hoe dan ook hun geld terug, en voeren de druk op. Maar een kale kip kan niet geplukt worden, en dus is het zaak om een flink gevederd dier te vinden. De grote accountantskantoren hebben goed gevulde schatkisten.

Naast PwC komen mogelijk ook KPMG en Ernst&Young in het beklaagdenbankje te zitten.

Claim Law School
De New York Law School heeft inmiddels al een claim neergelegd bij Ascot Partners, ook een investeringsfonds dat geld van cliënten had geïnvesteerd in Madoffs fonds. De Law School klaagde tevens BDO Seidman aan, het accountantskantoor van Ascot Partners en onderdeel van de BDO International accountantsgroep.

Bernie Madoff zelf zit overigens gedwongen thuis, met een enkelbandje om. Hij heeft huisarrest. Zijn vrouw heeft haar paspoort moeten inleveren.

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Fund manager tied to Madoff loss found dead
By Wallace Witkowski
Last update: 1:49 p.m. EST Dec. 23, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO -- Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, a fund manager who reportedly lost large sums in Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, was found dead in a New York office building, according to media reports Tuesday. A New York City Medical Examiner spokeswoman told Reuters that de la Villehuchet, 65, was pronounced dead at 8 am Eastern, and that the cause of death was not known. He co-founded Access International Advisors LLC, which specializes in managing hedged and structured-investment portfolios.

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Op dinsdag 23 december 2008 20:30 schreef SjonLok het volgende:

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http://www.marketwatch.co(...)A-BDEB-6051A14CE882}

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Madoff souvenirs nu op eBay te koop
Wat doe je als je het slachtoffer bent geworden van de enorme oplichting van Bernie Madoff? Redden wat er te redden valt en dan telt elk klein beetje. Of je probeert gewoon te profiteren van de bekendheid - ik moet zeggen beruchtheid - die de naam Madoff nu heeft. Op eBay zijn nu namelijk spullen te koop van het Madoff-bedrijf. Dan heb ik het over handdoeken, zaklampjes, T-shirts, petjes. Relatiegeschenken die een paar maanden geleden nog onbelangrijk waren, maar nu herinneren aan de grootste Ponzi-zwendel ooit. Slachtoffers van Madoff of voormalige zakenpartners hopen nu nog een paar dollar te vangen via de online veiling. Je kunt op meer dan 100 items bieden. En er is best vraag naar, want voor een fleece-trui met Madoff-logo is al meer dan 400 dollar neergeteld.

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Slachtoffer Madoff-fraude verdwenen



De oprichtster en directrice van één van de grootste institutionele slachtoffers van het piramidefonds van Bernard Madoff is spoorloos verdwenen. Sonja Kohn van het Oostenrijkse Medici heeft haar bank die $2,1 miljard verloor, achtergelaten.

Dit meldt de website Quotenet.nl.

Kohn, die zich liet kenmerken door een opvallende rode pruik, stond bekend om haar zeer agressieve aquisitiemethoden. Het waarom van de verdwijning is nog niet helemaal duidelijk. Het zou kunnen dat mevrouw Kohn zich diep schaamt, maar een ander scenario is dat ze heeft moeten onderduiken voor enkele van haar klanten.

Een aanzienlijk deel van de miljarden die ze belegde bij Madoff kwam namelijk van rijke Russen. En sommigen daarvan hebben zo hun eigen methoden. "Met Russische oligarchen als klant zou ze wel een reden kunnen hebben om bang te zijn", aldus een anonieme Weense bankier in de New York Times.

Kohn benaderde mogelijke investeerders door te zeggen dat de fondsen van Madoff moeilijk toegankelijk waren, maar dat zij het wel kon regelen omdat ze ‘Bernie’ goed kende. Kohn (60) is een ultra-orthodoxe joodse, vandaar dat ze een pruik droeg want in deze kringen is het tonen van eigen haar niet toegestaan.

Behalve rijke Russen wist ze ook Oekraïners, Israëliërs en – ondanks haar komaf – Arabieren te strikken om te investeren in Madoffs fonds. Ze werkte nauw samen met haar man Erwin.

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Een aanzienlijk deel van de miljarden die ze belegde bij Madoff kwam namelijk van rijke Russen. En sommigen daarvan hebben zo hun eigen methoden.