Alleged illegal and unethical activities

Alleged illegal and unethical activities of Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff, the former Chairman of the NASDAQ



Alleged illegal and unethical activities of Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff, the former Chairman of the NASDAQ

Bernie Madoff, former Chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), co-founder of the Nasdaq, founder and owner of Madoff Securities was a trusted player in the Wall Street financial community. Appearing in federal court stride 12, 2009, Madoff asserted, "I functioned a Ponzi design" (Levisohn,p. 38) and although his account of the workings of the design and information found out by law enforcement are in conflict, the fact that the fraud cost customers some $64 billion is unquestioned.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission Office of Investigation, "between June 1992 and December 2008 when Madoff confessed, the SEC received six substantive complaints that raised significant red flags concerning Madoff's hedge fund operations and should have led to questions about whether Madoff was actually engaged in trading" (page 22). While the SEC now believes the elaborate Ponzi scheme started as early as 1982, Madoff's recollection is it started out innocently enough during the recession of early 1990. His claim of not wanting to disappoint clients of returns on investments he had promised supposedly was the trigger for what became a twenty year long con. Believing he would make money in the future, Madoff paid the promised returns with cash infused by new investors. In court proceedings, he explained that he moved money around accounts in an effort to create the illusion of conducting the client's business and perpetuated the farce by mailing falsified verification of non-existent trades. He also pled at fault to lying to the Securities and Exchange charge asserting, "Clients would have no way of knowing the declarations were untrue" (p. 38). Madoff has refused to implicate anyone else in his scam and has doggedly protected his legitimate businesses managed by his brother and sons. Because of his stature in the financial community and on Wall Street, no one ever considered that Madoff could be a fraud. In fact, his legitimate businesses were so reputable that the existence of his securities fraud was unfathomable. Even after his confession and conviction, many clients had a difficult time reconciling the thief with the crime. According to open and Efrati, Madoff was "sentenced to the greatest 150 years behind bars for what his referee called an "extraordinarily evil" deception that agitated the nation's faith in its economic and legal systems and took "a staggering toll" on wealthy and poor alike" (2008,p. 1).



Government access

Since 1991, Madoff and his wife have assisted about $240,000 to government candidates, parties and committees, including $25,000 a year from 2005 through 2008 to the popular Senatorial crusade Committee. The managing group has returned $100,000 of the Madoffs' contributions to Irving Picard, the bankruptcy trustee who oversees all claims. Senator Charles E. Schumer returned almost $30,000 obtained from Madoff and his relatives to the trustee, and member of the senate ...