I guess I’m sorry for the charities who lost their money, but with rumors of a $250k minimum to join Madoff’s scheme, it included many of the filthy rich Wall Street types. I keep thinking of the scene at the end of Orwell’s Animal Farm. The animals watch their oppressors – humans who look like pigs, and pigs who look like humans – playing cards. A great squabble erupting two players simultaneously play an ace of spades.
– Overview:
– Madoff: “I’m very close to regulators.”
– SEC Ignored Madoff Scheme whistleblower!
Here’s a tiny sampling of what Markopolos told the SEC in his 21-page November 7, 2005 letter:
“I am a derivatives expert and have traded or assisted in the trading of several billion $US in options strategies for hedge funds and institutional clients. . . (Highly Likely) Madoff Securities is the world’s largest Ponzi Scheme. . . The [Madoff] family runs what is effectively the world’s largest hedge fund with estimated assets under management of at least $20 billion to perhaps $50 billion.”
– Madoff bought influence in Washington Within a day of the Dec. 11 arrest of Wall Street financier Bernard L. Madoff, his Washington lobbyists were scrambling to sever all ties to a man who’s been accused of a $50 billion fraud and who may go down in history as the largest financial scam artist ever.
– List of victims
HSBC HSBC’s direct exposure is believed to be about $1bn in loans provided to clients who invested some $500m of their own funds in Mr Madoff’s venture.
Access International $1.4 billion
Fortis Bank $1.4 billion
Man Group’s RMF division has about $350m invested. (FT)
Tremont Capital Fund of funds. $3.3 billion invested. (FT)
Pioneer Investments, an arm of Italy’s UniCredit, had “substantially all” of $835m invested with Madoff. (FT)
Union Bancaire Privet: $1.1 billion
Benbasset & Cie: $935 million
BBVA: $404 million
Maxam Capital Management LLC. Combined loss of $280 million. “I’m wiped out,” said Sandra Manzke, Maxam’s founder and chairman. The Darien, Conn., fund of hedge funds will have to close as a result of the losses, she said. (WSJ)
Fairfield Greenwich Group. Bloomberg: The biggest loser may be Walter Noel’s Fairfield Greenwich Group, whose $7.3 billion Fairfield Sentry Ltd. invested with Madoff’s eponymous firm, three people familiar with the matter said.
Kingate Management Ltd. Bloomberg says $2.8 billion Kingate Global Fund Ltd. invested with Madoff.
Santander. WSJ: The eurozone’s largest bank by market value, said its clients had an exposure of €2.33 billion ($3.1 billion). €2 billion belongs to institutional investors and international clients of its private-banking business, which provides services to wealthy individuals, it said. The remaining €320 million belongs to private-banking customers in Spain, where Santander is based.
el.”
Members of half-a-dozen country clubs: WSJ: “Mr. Madoff tapped social networks in Dallas, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis. . . . investors from the two clubs may have invested more than $100 million combined.
(. . . and more)
– Did Barnard Madoff act alone? (Fortune) — Like the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman, the theory that Bernard Madoff acted alone is hard to swallow.
True, Madoff has allegedly confessed that he perpetrated a massive fraud that left behind $50 billion in losses; and he claimed to have done this all alone.
– See also: The 10 nastiest ponzi schemes ever.