The 64 Billion Dollars Scam: Bernard Madoff

Wanna know one of the biggest Ponzi scheme fraud ever. You're in right place. Its about Mr. Bernie and how he managed to earn tens of billions of dollars over a short period of time. Let us go deeper.

The 64 Billion Dollars Scam: Bernard Madoff

Who Is Bernard Madoff?

Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff is an American financier who executed the largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars for at least 17 years, and possibly longer. He was also a pioneer in electronic trading and chairman of the Nasdaq in the early 1990s.

What Bernard Madoff did?

In early December 2008, at the height of the U.S. economic meltdown, people of every professional and social standard found themselves scrambling to liquidate funds across accounts. Many of Madoff's clients were no exception, but when his investors came calling, he couldn't answer their cash requests. Under mounting pressure Madoff came clean, admitting massive investment fraud affecting many people--including high-profile investors--and knocking Wall Street and the world back on its heels.

Who Madoff defrauded?

Madoff enjoyed an exemplary reputation in the financial community. His investors came from all walks of life and trusted him implicitly with their fund's management. Some of Madoff's more illustrious investors included a charitable organization fund by Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and the owners of the New York Mets. Large banks and pension funds such as Spanish bank Banco Santander; HSBC; Royal Bank of Scotland; and Korea Teachers Pension were scammed by Madoff as well. Some of Madoff's investors ended up on the street, living out of cars and RVs.

The Wall Street Journal developed a list of all Madoff's victims.

What Happened to Madoff and the Money?

Madoff pleaded guilty to charges of securities fraud, among others, and was sentenced to 150 years in a maximum-security prison. The courts are still sorting through Madoff's financial records in the wake of his arrest and indictment, trying to decide restitution and distribution to his investors with the money they can find. Still, in prison, Madoff maintains that the big banks defrauded in his scheme were complicit.

Perhaps the answer for not letting individuals such as this ruin so many lives lies in ML systems that are capable of detecting fraud behavior. But controlling and expecting those ML systems to work once they are deployed is not so easy as you might’ve thought. Some companies dedicated themselves to solving such problems (e.g. Deepchecks).

The End Notes

I like these fraud stories. Not because it's an easy way to earn money but it stops me from thinking in this direction. Because as always, the culprit goes behind the bars(except Vijay Maliya 🤣 ). 

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