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Ponzi scheme short summary
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Bernard “Bernie” Madoff was a business man who misused and took advantage of the trust of his clients in order to be personally benefited with money that would satisfy his greed. Bernard Lawrence Madoff better known as “Bernie” was born in Queens, New York on April 29, 1938. He comes from Polish, Romanian and Austrian ancestry. He grew up shortly after the great depression, with his father being a plumber and his mother not working at the time they lived with financial problems. His parents Ralph and Sylvia, in attempts to better their financial situation became official broker-dealers and started a company from their home. Their company, Gibraltar Securities, was closed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and accused of using the business …show more content…
His swim coach gave him a job working as a life guard at the Silver Point Beach Club, he also had a side job installing sprinkler systems. Working these two jobs, he would make money and save it for later. In 1956 Bernie attended his first year of college at the University of Alabama but then transferred to Hofstra University where he would stay and graduate from with a degree in political science. A year before he got his degree he married his girlfriend from high school Ruth Alpern. After receiving his degree, he used 5000 dollars that he had saved up working as a life guard and at his side job to start an investment firm which he called Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. He could not have started it had it not been for his parents in law who loaned him 50,000 dollars. His father in law who was a Certified Public Accountant also helped him by recommending him to people. Bernie eventually became a trustworthy person that many people went to to get a good and reliable return at the end of the year. It was because of this reliability that …show more content…
What happens is people are told to invest large amounts of money and promised large amounts of return if they do end up going through with it. What really happens is that the originator of the scheme tells vast amounts of people of the “opportunity”, the early one’s who invest are given their money in return as well as extra money provided from some later investors who unknowingly join the scheme. After this, amazed by their return they recommend it to their friends and family who also invest and only add fuel to the Ponzi scheme. Unfortunately, only the beginning investors have a possibility of winning from the situation, the investors who came later lose all that they had, while the originator of the Ponzi scheme reaps all the reward. For some back story on the Ponzi scheme we must learn about the man whom it was named after, Charles Ponzi. Charles Ponzi noticed a flaw with postage stamps and international reply coupons. He could buy international reply coupons and return them in another country in exchange for postage and because of it being just after World War I, the exchange rate was beneficial towards Ponzi in that he would receive more money than he had paid for. He told his plan to many investors and promised them a large amount of return in a short amount of time, this is usually what is said during a Ponzi
There are many crimes in America that people would consider to be major crimes. Some may say murder rape or child abuse but I think Ponzi schemes are the greatest crimes that people commit. A Ponzi scheme uses "investor money to find a productive business venture the con orders channels the proceeds from new investors to pay interest to only earlier ones"( Basu, 2014 pg.1). Ponzi schemes can come in many different shapes and sizes. Those types of disguises makes scheme hard to detect and make it hard for people to take legal actions against a company.
The case that was provided in the Stanwick textbook provided information on the Madoff Ponzi scheme which is said to be the largest of Ponzi schemes in the world. This case was a very interesting case. It showed how Bernard Madoffs massive falsehood created disaster for around 13,600 clients. The impact from Madoff did not end with his clients being impacted but also people far and in between. Madoffs Ponzi scheme was controlled through his company that consisted of his family being the head of the company, friends, and employees. This scheme was a result for the recession that hit in 2008. The two sons of Madoff that were top employees claimed to have no connections with the Ponzi scheme.
“Bernie Madoff began investing in penny stocks in 1960, and due to his impressive work ethic, received several big breaks. The first of which was his father in-law loaning him $50,000 to invest, and soon after, Carl Shapiro, a man who made his fortune in women’s clothing gave Madoff $100,000 to invest on his behalf” (Collins 2011). With this kick-start, Bernie quickly began making a name for him, especially as he promised clients a guaranteed 20% annual return on investment. This, coupled with his firm’s adoption of the latest technology made them a tour-de-force in the investment world. But what makes his eventual downfall more interesting is that he was not just a crook, Madoff did manage a successful, and legitimate brokerage firm. To some extent, the credibility he earned from these legitimate busines...
An inheritance from his father allowed Ponzi to attend the University of Rome, which only further perpetuated the goals his mother desired for him. From the stories his mother often told him of the aristocracy of the family, Ponzi sought after the wealth to accompany the reputation. At school he was accepted into a group of the wealthy elite, and often gambled to increase his monetary allowance. This however only bankrupted him, forcing him to drop out of the University. Urged by his uncle to leave Italy in pursuit of the United States because “he was refined and from a good family” and he could easily become wealthy in the United States. His uncle continued by telling young Ponzi, “in the United States, the streets are actually paved with gold. All you have to do is ...
The Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme is a well-known case and is known as one of the biggest Ponzi scheme’s. In summary the scheme occurred for many reasons that I will some up into 3 points; A lack in competency by regulatory agencies, a lack of regulation, and finally a breach in ethics by Bernie Madoff himself. To explain further, the regulatory agencies like the lawyers and SEC are supposed to prevent schemes such as this one from happening but because they lacked the skills to correctly assess the situation, interpreting the number of tips they had received regarding scheme that had been filed, and to act on those in an efficient manner. One of the tips was made by Harry Markopolos in 2000, of who correctly predicted that Madoff was guilty of fraud. Even after this tip from Markopolos, Madoff was not arrested until 2009. Many family members were also a part of the fraud along with some non-family members such as Frank DiPascali and a team known as the 17th floor team, who helped Madoff carry out his fraud. The idea behind Madoff’s fraud was that he would produce false statements of their investments and when people wanted to pull out their investments, the money wasn’t actually there, which rightfully rose more than a few eyebrows and ultimately led to his arrest.
There’s no real reason as to why Madoff planned to do this scheme, but it seems that he did it, simply because he was in a league of his own and he knew it, which is why it’s possible he went South. The only reason he came forward was because he failed to follow one of the first rules of a Ponzi scheme, he had too many investors in one year and on top of that, he had the global market crisis in 2008, which had opened up the skeletons in his closet. He later began telling his two sons of what he had been doing the last decades, and it wasn’t until Andrew Madoff had told FBI authorities, that his father, Bernie Madoff would be arrested the next day. It wasn’t until 2009 that Madoff pleaded guilty to securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, perjury, money laundering and etc. His assets were then sold in order to try and repay all the investors; evidently it wasn’t enough to repay $65million. He was then sentenced to the maximum sentence of 150years in prison. One law that was put in to place was that the SEC now requires all independent public accountants to double check an investment advisor’s numbers. In addition, all investment advisors are subject to surprise exam and custody controls. Also, in corporation with the Dodd Frank Act, whistleblowers can now receive up to 30percent of what the SEC recovers in fines. This will
Bernard Madoff had full control of the organizational leadership of Bernard Madoff Investments Securities LLC. Madoff used charisma to convince his friends, members of elite groups, and his employees to believe in him. He tricked his clients into believing that they were investing in something special. He would often turn potential investors down, which helped Bernard in targeting the investors with more money to invest. Bernard Madoff created a system which promised high returns in the short term and was nothing but the Ponzi scheme. The system’s idea relied on funds from the new investors to pay misrepresented and extremely high returns to existing investors. He was doing this for years; convincing wealthy individuals and charities to invest billions of dollars into his hedge fund. And they did so because of the extremely high returns, which were promised by Madoff’s firm. If anyone would have looked deeply into the structure of his firm, it would have definitely shown that something is wrong. This is because nobody can make such big money in the market, especially if no one else could at the time. How could one person, Madoff, hold all of his clients’ assets, price them, and manage them? It is clearly a conflict of interest. His company was showing high profits year after year; despite most of the companies in the market having losses. In fact, Bernard Madoff’s case is absolutely stunning when you consider the range and number of investors who got caught up in it.
Vladimir Putin first gained power in the year 1999 when Russian President Boris Yeltsin named him Prime Minister. Putin was then elected President of Russia in the year 2000, only to be reelected again in 2004. By 2008, he stepped down and served as Prime Minister once again only to be reelected as President in 2012. In all of his years of rule, Vladimir Putin proved himself to be a successful leader of Russia due to his economic policies, effective military reforms, and treatment of his people.
“Fifty percent profit in forty-five days!” was the claim of Charles Ponzi. Ponzi was a purported financial wizard. In the summer of 1920, he ran an “investment company” in Boston. He claimed to reap great profits by trading postal reply coupons. Nonetheless, the investment scheme was a fraud. Ponzi was using investors' money to pay off earlier investors, while keeping some for himself. In the end, he had collected $9,500,000 from 10,000 investors.
Bernie Madoff is one of the greatest conman in history. The Bernie Madoff scandal takes the gold as one of the top ponzi scheme in America. Madoff started the Wall Street firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, in 1960. Starting off as a penny stock trader with five thousand dollars, earned from his workings as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer, his firm began to grow with the support of his father-in-law, Saul Alpern, who helped by referred a group of close friends and family. Originally, his firm made markets by the National Quotations Bureau’s Pink Sheets. However, in order to compete with the bigger firms that were trading on the New York Stock Exchange floor, his firm started to use very intelligent computer software that help distributed their quotes in second’s rater then minutes. This software later became the NASDAQ that we know today. In December of 2008 Bernard Madoff confessed that he had embezzling billions of dollars from investors. It is estimated to have lasted nearly two decades, and stolen approximately $64.8 billion. On December 11, 2008 he was arreste...
Bernie Madoff ran one of the largest Ponzi Schemes in United States and although it was investigated many times by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), he was not caught until his confession in 2008. The timeline of the evidence submitted and the investigations that were actually done was staggering, and have left more questions than answers found. Bernie Madoff was born to Ralph and Sylvia Madoff in 1938. He married Ruth Alpern in 1959. Together the couple had two sons: Mark (1964-2010) and Andrew (1966-2014).
Bernie Madoff, “a former American stock broker, investment advisor, non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world”. (Bernard Madoff, 2011, para. 1) Bernie was able to convince investors to give him large sums of money with the promise that they would received between eight percent to twelve percent return a year. Bernie ran a pyramid scheme where Bernie kept the large sums of money for himself, and then he used the new investors funds to pay off the o...
Surname 3 Author Tutor Course Date Inaccurate Portrayal of Drug Use and Effect in ‘The wolf of wall street’ In this movie, The Wolf of wall Street, it clear that the use and effect of drugs has been inaccurately portrayed, and after watching the film one may feel like using drugs makes one a hero, which is not the case.
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of returns to previous investors from funds paid by new investors.With little or no legal earnings, Ponzi schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to operate. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when the operator is unable to recruit new investors ,when a large number of investors ask to cash out or if the operator disappears.These types of financial fraud have had a tremendous affect on the accounting profession, in the form of forensic accounting.
Smith, Aaron, “Five things you didn't know about Bernie Madoff's epic scam” (December 11, 2013) http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/10/news/companies/bernard-madoff-ponzi/ (March 31, 2014)