Tag: bernie madoff

Madoff Friends Face the Music

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I always feel a certain element of surprise when the Justice Department acts on an economic crime. Much of the time they pretend it doesn’t exist or tell everyone how hard it is to prosecute. Well, this one is easy; some juicy kills for a prosecutor who will later parley his victories into money. I’m sorry to be cynical but considering the fish they let get away, these guys are not that much. Of course, they do deserve prosecution and I won’t be sorry to see them go to prison

 

English: Bernard Madoff's mugshot
English: Bernard Madoff’s mugshot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

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It is important for business ethics that there be accountability. But right now, getting caught for financial improprieties is about as likely as getting struck by lightning. That’s not much of a deterrent.

 

James Pilant

 

Bernie Madoff’s colleagues going on trial – Salon.com

 

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/07/bernie_madoffs_colleagues_going_on_trial_newscred/

 

Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernard Madoff claimed he alone orchestrated his $65bn scam – starting tomorrow US prosecutors aim to prove that was another lie.Jury selection starts Tuesday in the case against five of the convicted fraudster’s closest colleagues – all of whom have pleaded not guilty to aiding and abetting Madoff in his scheme.The charges include conspiracy to defraud, securities fraud and falsifying records of a broker-dealer. Madoff is currently serving a 150-year sentence after pleading guilty to fraud following the collapse of his Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities in 2008.Three of the defendants worked for Madoff for decades. Daniel Bonventre, the director of operations for the firm’s back office, started working for Madoff around 1968. Annette Bongiorno, his executive assistant, has known Madoff for over 40 years. Joann Crupi, who managed clients’ investment accounts, worked for Madoff for over 25 years. Also standing trial are computer programmers Jerome O’Hara and George Perez.According to the prosecution Madoff and his accomplises created false records and invented exotic trading schemes to explain the firm’s consistent high returns. In fact “the truth was that Madoff and his co-conspirators – with very rare exception – were not making any trades at all,” the indictment said.

 

via Bernie Madoff’s colleagues going on trial – Salon.com.

 

From around the web.

 

From the web site, Charles Omole’s Nigerian Strategies.

 

(I regard this as a similar situation to that in the United States. jp)

 

http://nigerianstrategies.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/efcc-and-the-magic-of-selective-prosecution/

 

This is a deliberate mess created by the politicians to give
impression they are waging real war on fraud and corruption when in fact
they are only interested in selective prosecution of their opponents.
To restore public confidence; The government should immediately publish
again a clear guidance of when EFCC, ICPC and Nigerian Police can lead
the prosecution of cases. EFCC with its specialised assets, training and
skills should concentrate on major, large and complex crimes only. The
Nigeria police should deal with minor and straightforward financial
crimes. As for ICPC; I am not really sure what value that brings to the
table. It should just be scrapped and EFCC should be strengthened to do
its work.

 

I believe one of the main reasons EFCC has not been as successful as
it should be is the fact that it is becoming jack of all trade and
master of non. It is prosecuting a N100,000 thief and a N100Billion
thief at the same time.  Human nature means many of their staff will be
more interested in the smaller and simpler cases; to be able to raise
their conviction statistics. But that is not why they were established.
EFCC should from now on focus on serious financial crimes and go after
the “big guns” and stop chasing thieving drivers and houseboys.  They
should leave that to the regular police.

 

Bernie Madoff Targets Banks and Hedge Funds: “They Had to Know” (via Sense On Cents)

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Larry Doyle

From Larry Doyle’s Blog, Sense on ¢ents:

Bernie Madoff deserves zero sympathy and less attention. On the other hand, those seriously impacted by his crimes deserve not only sympathy but also recompense. Irving Picard, the trustee pursuing that recompense on behalf of Madoff investors, is making some high profile claims and has generated substantial results. That said, selected Madoff investors have informed me that they give Picard very mixed reviews.

Doyle goes on to discuss Madoff’s recent comments that others had to know about what he was doing. Doyle believes like me that it is not possible to move that kind of money around without someone realizing that something was wrong.

The article continues –

I have no doubt that the Wall Street banks and a variety of hedge funds knew, should have known, or did not want to know what was truly transpiring within Madoff’s operation.

But, let’s go deeper than that. Who is charged with keeping these banks honest? What about the regulators? Not that Bernie has any real credibility, but why isn’t he compelled to provide further testimony about those who regulated his enterprise, specifically the NASD, its offspring FINRA, and the SEC?

Right. How come the various federal agencies are not investigating this?

Because they don’t want to.

Because it would be embarrassing.

Because there would be political fallout.

It wouldn’t stop the feds from putting any of us in jail but assisting Madoff is no big deal because it wasn’t done by people like “us.”

James Pilant

Nobody Goes To Jail?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Matt Taibbi has it right –

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What’s more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even “one dollar” just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick “The Gorilla” Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

Two kinds of justice? Is there one for you and I, and another for the great financial elites? Let’s say that I steal $100,000 dollars from my employer, if they press charges would I go to jail? Quite likely. What if I work for a giant investment bank and I commit fraud and other security violations to the tune of several hundred million dollars? Will I go to jail then? No.

What is going on here? This isn’t fair.

Why do we put people in jail or prison? To punish them and discourage others from committing the same offenses.

What message does this “two-tiered” system of “justice” send? It says that wrongdoing is okay if you are properly placed in the economy. If you are not placed in the right industry with the right friends and the right “law enforcement,” you can expect to be penalized when you commit crimes. The impact is clear, if you work in the financial industry you will not be punished for your financial crimes.

Do I have to tell you that giving sectors of the economy the right to commit crimes at will is bad policy? They will continue to do it.

In 2007, these crimes almost brought down the world economy. The damage done did through us into the Great Recession.

They walk free even after this.

What can be done?

James Pilant