Bernard Madoff Fraud Fallout Continues In Ever More Depressing Ways
As some wag noted in the comments section of one of the Merckle posts, Bernard Madoff must be under a life-threatening level of stress right now. Since we last had a look at his sustained and massive fraudulence, there’s been ever more misery, finger-pointing, and general lurching about.
This piece in the FT today is interesting, saying how the case is highly unconventional in the way it’s being run. First there’s how the FBI found out about it and were kicking in Madoff’s door within hours, unlike their usual approach of amassing all the evidence over months or years. Then there’s the fact that the FBI and US Attorney’s office are working on the case, as well as financial services watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission, who in turn are being investigated, rather worryingly by themselves, about how they could have missed the fraud in the first place. While the case has been blown out into the open, there’s now a period of hunkering back down, and trying to find both the defrauded money (recently estimated to still be $830m in liquid assets) and whether anyone else was involved, as well as starting the process of seeing who dropped the ball in the SEC.
So while the Bureau gets its best web-of-lies untanglers to work, let’s have a look at some of the nasty details that have emerged recently. Carl Shapiro, the kindly philanthropic investor who lost big with Madoff gave him $250m just 10 days before Madoff’s confession; so was it an investment, or a loan? And if it was the latter, did Shapiro have an inkling of what was up? I wonder, not that I think the poor guy was any way involved.
Meanwhile, the founder of Bank Medici, Sonja Kohn, has gone into hiding after investing $2.1bn with Madoff; what she’s hiding from are the concrete Manolos she’s being fitted for by the hired goons of Russian oligarchs, who have holdings in the Austrian bank. Eeek! And another sad tale of suicide amid financial collapse came with Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, who killed himself just before Christmas after he lost over $1bn of other people’s money by investing with Madoff.
Schaudenfraude fans and anti-Semites can get their fix at the New Yorker, where this article hangs out with the rich Jews of Palm Beach, who are pawning their jewellery after they’ve started to realise their losses – we’re talking $50,000 vintage Cartier, as well as some disgusting-sounding animal shaped pieces that apparently go for tens of thousands. Sounds like the enforced new-puritanism will at least slough off some of bad lapses in taste.
And finally there’s Madoff himself having one last throw of the dice of illegality, by sending $1m-worth of jewels through the mail whilst on bail, in an effort to have something to leave his wife and kids. I’m being really soft, but that make me feel actually sorry for him. Must be that post-Christmas glow still working away.
Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | January 7, 2009 1:34PM |
January 9th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Just a quick note to a commenter, who posted here earlier: we will not tolerate racism on this site, no matter how cryptic the reasoning behind it, so we deleted your post.
January 14th, 2009 at 4:52 am
Remember Enoch Powell? He said, “If UK immigration continues as it does there will be blood on the streets” Most of the “intellectuals” at that time called him a racist.
After some of the bloodiest riots in the UK, he said “You have seen nothing yet” Most of those intellectuals shuffled their feet, looked down at the ground and said nothing.
If you censor truths that not politically correct, then you will confirm, what is in most peoples minds, that in the thesaurus included in the section, intellectual, academic, liberal, etc, there should be another word that begins with W and ends in ker, and it isn’t worker.
Prejudice “they say” is all about fear. What seems to have escaped their (your) tiny mind is that their fear may well be well justified
January 14th, 2009 at 6:01 am
Oh by the way, before the truth came out, I’ll bet you a “hundreds of thousands of US and Iraqi lives against couple of hundred Israeli bus passengers lives” that “Harry Markopolos” was an anti-semite.
I’ll even throw in 39 US sailors murdered, (USS Liberty) against the $4 billion grant Israel got from the US taxpayer (that year!!!); even if, some of those taxpayers were the relatives of the murdered goyim.
I paraphrase Tiberius here, before the bloodletting really started, “See how eager they are to become slaves”
January 14th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
@ Murphy
Very true.
But wasn’t Enoch who actually incited the whole carribean’s working in the UK for free cause they would be cheap labour and do jobs that working class white Brits felt were beneath them??
Use your pretty mind.
How did it happen??
Go google sweet peas.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Also sweet cheeks.
Was it the bible said that it’s never a good idea to go into someone’s land and colonise them taking all their minerals resources and the like, live there and then only leave because of world regulations against human rights?
And then the Bible continued that instead of living them alone you create a concept called ‘free market’ and bring in companies from your country to build there and make even more money for your country as well as selling them arms??
Yes, quite. T’was the ol’Bible me thinks. Or just this thing called the way the World has worked(s)…
Oh well! Silly Britain!
But no! They are still at it!
Was it pure British Thatchers son who was arrested in Guinea for trying to over throw the government???
Say it aint so!
What would a white man be doing in Africa?? He musn’t know it houses ‘the blacks’!!
Ahhhhh…
January 15th, 2009 at 12:18 am
I live now. I fear what I fear. I wasn’t even at the Battle of Waterloo. Nor was I consulted about Imperial policy in the 19th/20th century. Remember next time your mugged on a British street, it was probably done by a white computer engineer.
January 15th, 2009 at 6:11 am
I bow my head in shame, your right. See what the blacks have done to Zimbabwe since the white guys left. And Haiti a black superpower after only 200 years.