Does Bernard L. Madoff deserve the death penalty?

WTF? No, he doesn’t.

No.

No, he’s an dishonest asshole, not a murderer. There is never any guarantee with an investment like that; those people knew that.

No he does not deserve the death penalty. He deserves to be forced to liquidate all of his assets (even the hidden ones) and distribute the money to the folks he bilked out of millions of dollars. He should be forced to live on social security or unemployment – until they run out – then he will have to move in to his car or to a refrigerator box on the 101/405 interchange. Death penalty? No. Cruel and unusual punishment? Quite possibly.

No. What? No.

No. Rot in hell? Yes.

If he stole from me Ii would find him and break his thiefing fingers by setting them on a block and smashing them with a sledgehammer. \

@evelyns pet zebra Seriously I think I could pull it and get away. LIke a million people have motive. Mask , gloves, and duct tape help. I watch to much CSI, the first 48, forensic files. to get caught in a crime.

@buster and then they would arrest you for felony assault and battery and send you to jail. But I understand why you felt the need to hurt him.

Nope. I am completely and entirely against the death penalty.

No. He should be forced to work at Taco Bell for the rest of his life.

@Bri_L

Priceless :)

He should be forced to eat at Taco Bell for the rest of his life. I would rather work there.

He’d probably tan up real nice, change his name to Gonzales and start ripping off the Mexicans lol

No one does.

@bri_l classic!

No

In fact I don’t find him in the same criminal class as Charles Keating who set up salesmen in his S&L and got his customers (mostly seniors) to transfer their money from insured accounts to stock in his soon to be bankrupt corp.

When Madoff went wrong he was scamming billionaires by promising them returns much too great to be plausible. They were suckered by their own greed. Eventually he brought in banks and municiple investors who were supposed to be knowledgeable professionals but they couldn’t see beyond their greed and should all be drummed out of their jobs.

Madoff couldn’t have gotten away with much without the cooperation of his ‘victims’. If someone comes up to you and says “Give me a dollar and I’ll run it through my magic box and give you two dollars back”, what would you do? If you don’t understand your investments, put your money in govt bonds.

The only people who were innocents were residents of cities whose revenue was invested with Madoff. Even then they should have had oversight committees for their hired financial officers.

Investment Rule 1: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably ia.

@galileogirl

It’s a tad bit more difficult, although I generally agree with you. The thing about Madoff was that his (bogus) returns weren’t that “exorbitant” but steady, very very steady.

And of course he had his credentials, after all, the man was Chairman of NASDAQ, they really don’t come more polished than him.

Combine that with his philanthropic aspirations, and the fact that he turned down plenty of people literally begging for being allowed to invest with him, and you have a figure so above and beyond any doubt that I can see how so many fell for him.

He was selling investments that nobody understood, just like the magic box. He turned down people who weren’t rich enough or might be too savvy. He was smart enough not to promise the Emerald City but they always came out ahead. Nobody always comes out ahead, but don’t look behind the curtain

Investment Rule 2: The bigger the return, the bigger the risk.

@galileogirl

errm…

This link contains a list of Madoff victims. Amongst them:

Santander Bank
HSBC Bank
Union Bancaire Privee
Royal Bank of Scottland

and so on and so forth. This guy fooled some of the savviest money managers in the world. His return rate was around 11%, which is mediocre compared to some more speculative investments.

It wasn’t the return percentage people went for, it was the steadiness, year after year after year.

Wow. No, he shouldn’t be killed. The death penalty is reserved for people who do heinous crimes. Madoff could not have perpetrated any of his crimes without the willingness and greed of his investors, who should have been smarter and not invested money if they couldn’t understand where he got his profits from.

Plus, you know, there’s the person who pointed out many times to the appropriate authorities that Madoff’s scheme was monetarily impossible to exist legitimately, and he was ignored. And Madoff was investigated a few times too, but managed to hide his deeds from the investigators. The corruption in his case was not limited to him alone, thus the punishment of murder would be ill-applied.

thanks for your answers, I appreciate each and everyone of you taking the time to consider the concept of the death penalty for white collar crime. There were no wrong answers here, but some great insights. Lurve to you all.

If you take someone’s life, you shouldn’t be entitled to yours anymore. I sort of lean towards “eye for an eye” in a lot of situations.

@poofandmook then you would just take his money and not even put him in jail since he never imprisoned anybody.

Well, sort of, galileogirl. I think he deserves to sit in the corner for a period of time proportionate to how bad he was. In this case, he can sit there for the rest of his life.

I just think that violent crimes and white collar crimes shouldn’t be treated the same way, penalty wise. I believe violent crimes require worse punishments. Unfortunately, most of those punishments could only be enforced by way of vigilante justice.

Edit: But then again, doesn’t it tickle you just a bit to imagine him, stripped of every penny, stripped of any credit rating, fighting for every morsel of food and trying to keep warm and dry at night? Replace Prada with The New York Times…?

Along the lines of if we don’t learn the lessons of history, we are going to have to live them again-see Michael Milken

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken

He paid the highest criminal fines in history but when he came out of prison he was richer than when he went in. I guess that showed those white collar criminals, right?

No, but we should take his balls “Fight Club” style. that sets a good precedent I think.