Is Bernard Madoff a front man, and where is the money?

He donated all the money to charity. He thought that what he was doing was good. Now, charities have to give back all the money.

He did not squirrel it away. it was a Ponzi scheme. He took in new money and paid earlier investors. He also spent a lot on himself.

There is interest in his family, because he did put properties, possessions, cash and securities in his wife’s name. Many, many millions. An investigation is going on now. Those funds will be confiscated, because they came from his illegal schemes.

There is other attention on his family, because some of them were involved in the crimes.

@zack You’re being sarcastic, right?

I dont care if his wife got 70 million or not. He stole 70 billion. He didnt spend that much on himself. His fam aint got no where nere that much money

@Marina I’m not kidding. He donated a lot of it to charity and now the charities have to give it back. He thought that he was helping the world, not destroying people’s lives.

@Mtl_zack He also had the charities as clients and stole their money.

@Mtl_zack: Can to cite a source? I haven’t heard or read that anywhere, and I find it highly unlikely.

Oops. I mixed it up. The charities who had rich people supporting them were going broke because the rich people weren’t so rich anymore. Sorry for the confusion.

I don’t believe it for a minute. Look he was at one time the chairmen of the Nasdaq exchange. He has a lot more money than made out in the press.

What happened is that he promised incredible returns to his investors. He used the money “invested” by the second round of investors to pay the first round of investors. Then he used the money “invested” by the third round of investors to pay the second round of investors. After a few rounds, word got around that his “investment fund” was producing a really good return on the investment.

(Around here is where a private investigator working with the Boston branch of the SEC discovered that something was hinky, and word was passed from the Boston branch to the NYC branch, and then dropped on the floor and not investigated any further.)

So, you have an investment fund run by a wealthy Jewish man, and a lot of charities started investing their endowment money with him, because it was getting such a great return. But when the economy started to go south, fewer people were interested in investing.

A pyramid scheme can pay a return of X% to each round of investors as long as there are X% more investors in round N+1 as there were in round N. But when fewer people were investing, the whole thing collapsed, and it was apparent that it was all fraudulent.

As far as the question of where the money went: it went to investors in the earlier rounds, and he skimmed off money from the top for himself and for his family.

I still think after 20 years, he had more money then just paying back the scheme.
I assure you that the books were obscured to show major losses to make it look like the money vanished, when in reality a large portion of those so-called “losses” of fund assets are just a cover for the money that went missing and that has been squirreled away into off-shore funds.

I find, as a Jew, one of the worst parts about it is that it enforces the stereotype of greedy Jew who’s good with money. He is Jewish, most of the investors were Jewish, and many of the charities were Jewish. Then one Jew stabs his friends in the back. There is so much about money, and then he and the other people involved happen to be Jewish, so it makes it seem that it’s a conspiracy of Jews.

@Mtl_zack: Ugh. I’d rather think it only seems that way to people who are already well-entrenched idiots and bigots.

That’s for sure on the Jewish clientele. A renown sportswriter locally along with others in a near by area were had this is after another local dude swindled everyone on a ponzi scheme. That wasn’t where I was going with this or even alluding to, yes it just so happens to be the case now that you bring it up. All I am saying is I think there are others important people involved who have an interest in covering it up, and it is hell of a lot bigger than the propaganda that is being pushed on us.