madoff has made off with their money

A criminal saga that began in December 2008 with a string of superlatives — the largest, longest and most widespread Ponzi scheme** in history — ended the same way on Monday as Bernard L. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum for his crimes.

**In a Ponzi scheme, potential investors are wooed with promises of unusually large returns, usually attributed to the investment manager’s savvy, skill or some other secret sauce.

The returns are repaid, at least for a time, out of new investors’ principal, not from profits. This can continue as long as new investors line up with cash, and old investors don’t try to withdraw too much of their money at once.

what you might want to know

On Wall Street, his name was legendary. Now it is infamous.

With money Bernard L. Madoff had earned as a lifeguard on the beaches of Long Island, he built a trading powerhouse that had prospered for more than four decades.

largest fraud in Wall Street history

Mr. Madoff left a zigzagged path of financial destruction across the world, from HSBC bank to BNP Paribas, to industry leaders and celebrities in the United States, from Elie Wiesel, the Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and the publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

. Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet a prominent hedge fund manager who apparently had lost $1.4 billion with Mr. Madoff, was found dead in his office on Madison Avenue on Dec. 22. The evidence pointed to suicide

mag
the question is - how did this go on for so many years undetected

cecelia
it's simple - take from the very rich and spend it all on a lavish lifestyle; take from the rich and pay the very rich their "lucrative returns" and spend the rest; then take from the poor and pay the rich...sounds like a clever scheme...

sane thomas
clever? more like - devious...one that has devastated many...