Jun 29, 2009 3:24pm
Madoff’s Spurned Investors — How Much Sympathy?
EmailBernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. We asked earlier for input on that. One post was counter intuitive…at least it was different from many of the other responses:
"I am not in the least sorry for those who lost money in the Madoff scheme. Did any of them question or ask for documentation of where the money was coming from? I believe they just took the money and ran. Question: don't they have to pay income taxes on their gains??? How could they without documentation stating where that income was from? As for Madoff: I hope he lives long enough to serve out his full sentence." – Barb of Mpls
Thoughts?
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Did Bernie Madoff do this all his own? Or where there people who saw what was going on and did nothing, other accountants reporting the problem and regulators not doing their job, greedy investors not doing their due diligence. If someone sent you an email that you won an email lottery and you send the person all your personal information, would that other person be totally at fault because your bank account is now empty?
Posted by: WD | June 29, 2009, 4:18 pm 4:18 pm
Yes, that person would be totally at fault. You would be stupid, yes, but that person committed the crime, not the person who gave their personal information.
Posted by: Redsauce | June 29, 2009, 4:20 pm 4:20 pm
For several months we have known how he gathered such vast sums. But today for the first time we got a glimpse into his motivations, and a hint that they were something other than what we had imagined. If I heard right, he said that in the beginning he was investing legitimately, but the 1990 recession hit his fund hard. Apparently, he was embarrassed to tell his investors that there were big losses. So he just kept taking in new funds, paying out to the earlier investors, and off it went. Maybe at the beginning he even dreamed that he could invest enough of what was coming in to catch up. We don’t know. In any case, once it became clear that he didn’t really need to do any investing, the whole thing took on a life of its own.
Posted by: Lester Mazor | June 29, 2009, 4:24 pm 4:24 pm
Barb of Mpls: I dont’ think they’d pay anything until they “sold” stock. Technically you don’t make money until you receive cash out of it, which is when you could have capital gains. Presumably there are Madoff investors who never saw profits.
Posted by: Mary of NC | June 29, 2009, 4:26 pm 4:26 pm
Barb – if you had been following this story for longer than two days, you would have learned that Madoff sent statments to all the investors. Of course the statements were lies but the investors didn’t know that at the time. Many investors were not “direct” investors but their money was invested with Madoff by funds that others invested in. Most didn’t take the “returns” on their investments and run. They left the money invested so it would grow. What they didn’t know is that their money was never invested in the market like Madoff told everyone. He just took the money and spent it but told everyone he was buying and selling in the market. He never should have been sentenced to 150 years. He should have been taken to Wall St. and publicly hung and his corpse left to rot. His wife should never have been allowed to keep $2.5 M of stolen money. She should be in the same position as all the Madoff investors – penniless. Let her get a job street sweeping with a broom in the streets of New York. Claiming that she knew nothing is pure bs. She worked alongside him for years.
Posted by: Richard | June 29, 2009, 4:28 pm 4:28 pm
i am not to familiar
with the procedure
maybe he did give false paper work to those individuals and they might have paid taxes
on those profits..
still this is a very interesting
tidbit to chew over dinner with the family thankyou
Posted by: l king | June 29, 2009, 4:32 pm 4:32 pm
id take 1/1000 if what he took for free
anyone know how much i would have???
anyone???
just wondering what the response to that question would be
Posted by: l king | June 29, 2009, 4:34 pm 4:34 pm
Greed is a nasty thing, how an investor could continue to get money from their accounts without ever asking “How?” is just incredibale to me. Don’t get me wroung I do feel pity for those that invested all that they had and lost everything– But I feel little to no pity for those that were worth millions or even billions and lost a large chuck of their net worth, As far as the “Charity” groups perhaps the people who thought that Bernie was a good and trusting soul should be forced in someway to make amends to their “Charity”. And with great hope someone is reading this that can explaine to me how the rest of his family could not know about the missing money, dont wife’s know what their hubbies are doing, or what about the children who also worked with their father are we the people supposed to think no one knew about the wool he was pulling over every ones eye’s- I like magic but if i see the same trick a few times I usally figure it out.
Posted by: James Rich | June 29, 2009, 4:36 pm 4:36 pm
Unfortunately people become victims of their own need to have more than what they presently possess. Im sure that any of them wished they had what they started out with before Madoff. “Less is more” is always sound guidance. If you already have millions, why do you need more millions? We must learn to be content with the present things, that way we are not caught off guard by greed. They in a sense victimized themselves long before Madoff did.
Posted by: patriciaje | June 29, 2009, 6:46 pm 6:46 pm
Bernie Madoff is Brilliant!!! The oldest individual of the family sacrifices himself so the rest of the many individuals, who make up the family unit, can live lavishly the rest of their long lives.
Posted by: Tom McMaster | June 29, 2009, 8:09 pm 8:09 pm
Who is BS’ing who? All the greedy reptiles were in on this scam, as well as Mr. Madoff. However, I believe his wife is also a schiczter too. These people have no regard for others. Their only incentive is money for them. So what if the people who invested with him were not all knowledgeable about investing? That’s why they had that jerk, and his lackeys.If we all got what we deserved for not knowing all about cars, computers, phones, investments, real estate, we’d all be poor. There is an element of trust that we must have, even if armed with all the info we can find. We seek these experts out in an effort to help us with their knowledge. How many times have we hoped we went to an honest vendor, but without really knowing for sure? Everyone should do their homework, but, come on, the self-righteous on these blogs better never hope it happens to them. How ignorant of you! People’s lives ruined, a variety of medical illnesses arise from fear, anxiety, depression. How can we do this to each other? We aren’t animals…but, h-m-m-m-m, let me rethink that.
I hope they take Madoff, his skank wife, the other reptiles, and sentence them to work in the shelters with the homeless, and have to walk in the winter with a grocery cart (no cashmere coat), live in the sewers, eat from garbage cans, sleep under park benches, be preyed upon by people who think it is funny to beat up and set the underdogs on fire, etc. This should be their life sentence. Oh…..and let me be even more frank; everyone who feels like it gets to throw feces on them, and spit in their faces! Sounds harsh, …TOUGH
Posted by: K Cope | June 29, 2009, 9:23 pm 9:23 pm
I’m acquainted with some Madoff victims. Some of them had trusted financial advisors to create a diversified portfolio for them, who instead stuck it all with Bernie. And I’m sure there were gold-plated incentives for them to do so.
This was multi-level marketing at it’s finest, and a lot of people at every level are going to jail. Just because it isn’t today doesn’t mean it won’t be tomorrow. And with such a severe sentence handed down to Bernie, they’re going to start ratting each other out to make a deal.
Posted by: Perkle | June 30, 2009, 1:13 am 1:13 am
let bernie go
Posted by: farnsworth | June 30, 2009, 6:12 am 6:12 am
If I invested $100,000. and withdrew $75,000. I would have $25,000. left.
If I invested $100,000. and withdrew $75,000. in my Madoff account and my statement showed $2,250,000. how much did I lose?
Posted by: farnsworth | June 30, 2009, 6:15 am 6:15 am
Madoff had plenty of help in this scheme. The feds should go after all of them. Also, all of that money is somewhere. I hope they find the hidden money as well.
Madoff needs to take this time out and find his lost soul before it’s too late for him.
Posted by: jk | June 30, 2009, 8:09 am 8:09 am