Wednesday, Bernard Madoff requested leniency through his attorney Ira Sorkin, who suggested a sentence of 12 years would be a sufficient penalty for his client's crime of stealing billions of dollars in one of the greatest frauds in history.

Sentencing by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin is set for Monday June 29, and the eyes of the world will be upon him. So will the eyes of the yet-to-be discovered fraudsters everywhere.

My thoughts on the subject are relatively simple and have little to do with revenge or payback. In cases like this I often remember a very old quote from another time and place.

There are very few people on this planet that can honestly say that they have not been affected in some way by the economic firestorm caused by underappreciating risk.

Congress, along with the Securities and Exchange Commission during a period where the White House was comatose, opened up the flood gates for Wall Street's financial wizards to bet the world and lose!

I have to admit that I'm a little naïve. While I've long since realized that rich men and pretty girls go together like frat parties and crab lice, I always assumed that the connection was tenuous and unformed. Basically, I imagined that it was a matter of overlapping social circles: bars, nightclubs and restaurants use financial sector employees to boost their bottom line by buying overpriced drinks and over-engineered food. In order to get these socially inept adrenaline junkies in the door, hot spots try to attract models by offering free crudite, well-appointed vomitoria, and... you guessed it, large numbers of financial sector employees. Thus, the models find their money men, the money men get their gold diggers, and the restaurants get a lot of money.

Now, I'm not a total rube. I never thought for a second that this connection was the result of random chance or pure romance. After all, there is nothing like a model to enhance the reputation and self-image of a hedge fund manager. Conversely, after Baywatch went off the air, financial-sector employees became the ultimate means for aging models to parley their looks into long-term financial security. Both groups have something to offer the other; while this may not be the basis for true love, it certainly serves as a stable foundation for a business arrangement.

Madoff should have asked for protective custody
Instead he asked for bail
The judge sent him home in bracelets
When he should have sent him to jail

Madoff admits stealing $50 billion with no remorse over 30 years
Investors and foundations lost millions and are raining tears

A thousand questions cannot be answered
How could this scandal go on so long?
Undetected by the regulators and investors around the world
Who didn't think always winning meant something was wrong

They turned a blind eye while they were charmed by a smile
From a friendly man with a key to the city and connections that could beguile

The Securities and Exchange commission did not do its job
Incompetence in the highest office for three decades
Giving the swindler Bernie Madoff a license to rob
And pretend he was a genius trader when few were ever made

I have to hand it to Brady Dougan, CEO of Credit Suisse. He has shown some fiendishly clever imagination in paying bonuses to his managing directors. Instead of giving them multimillion dollar cash bonuses this year, he's paying them in the very thing that has brought Wall Street to its knees -- $5 billion of its leveraged loans and commercial mortgage-backed debt.

This move alone demonstrates that Credit Suisse is using its brain. By doing this, Dougan keeps the future losses of $5 billion worth of its toxic waste from cutting into Credit Suisse's earnings. Since the alternative was giving them no bonus at all, those managing directors will have a chance to share the emotions of all the people to whom they sold that toxic waste.

Not only that, but it will be much harder to get the general public angry at Credit Suisse for paying bonuses in toxic waste than other firms that are actually paying cash to their employees. Credit Suisse took $2.8 billion in losses in October and November, but it has not received any government money, unlike its peers. But the cleverest part of all is the accounting for the $5 billion in bonuses.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

So what do you do for fun when you're worth $600 million? Gambling is one option. Though the thought of sitting in front of a slot machine in Vegas and feeding it quarter after quarter might be less than appealing for some, I suppose it would be different if each pull on the bandit's arm cost $1,000. And even if you don't need another penny in your bank account, it still might be kind of fun when the bells ring and the lights flash as you hit the jackpot.

This is what happened to multi-millionaire Candy Spelling this past year. She was reportedly playing high limit slots at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas when she hit the jackpot. Her payout? A cool $180,000. (Though as TMZ points out, that's the equivalent of about $8 to us ordinary proles.)

Candy is of course the wife of legendary television producer Aaron Spelling, creator of such eternal classics as The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, Charlie's Angels, and Beverly Hills 90210, among many others. Together, the Spellings created another classic: their daughter Tori, actress and tabloid all-star. Aaron Spelling died in 2006, leaving an estate worth over half a billion dollars, famously controlled by his wife but not Tori.

This week a little story about a $50 billion investment fraud has metastasized. Madoff Securities, a brokerage firm that ran a secretive investment fund on the side, has closed down -- revealing that its steady 10% annual returns was a result of a Ponzi scheme. For some who trusted Madoff a week ago, they are today coming to grips with life without money. Is Madoff the only one out there? I doubt it. So you need to protect yourself.

How did Madoff accomplish this? That story has yet to be revealed. But founder Bernie Madoff revealed that he was using money from his most recent investors to pay off the earlier ones who requested their money. And a letter from hedge fund research and advisory firm, Aksia -- which steered its clients away from Madoff -- reveals five useful clues:

• Unknown accounting firm. Madoff used an accounting firm Friehling & Horowitz that employed three people -- one was a 78 year old living in Florida.
• Incomprehensible investment strategy too good to be true. Madoff employed a "split conversion strategy" which was never clearly defined and whose returns other traders could not duplicate.
• Deception about technology. Madoff claimed it was technologically sophisticated but a visitor to its offices found paper tickets sent through the mail.

The average American family has seen its income fall over the last eight years while its expenses have risen. Not so for the top 1%. They've been building 40,000 square foot mansions and flying in private jets to visit their vacation homes in Aspen and the Hamptons and so on. But since the fall of 2007, things have headed downhill for the rich along with the Dow -- which has lost 36% of its value since its peak in October 2007.

They're changing their lifestyles. How so? Vanity Fair provides examples of how the super-rich are downsizing in wine, shoes, fitness training, air travel, grocery shopping, and maid service. To illustrate these changes, the list below contrasts their behavior in these different categories between the fall of 2007 and the fall of 2008:

WINE

• 2007: $1,950 bottle of 2003 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2008: $15 bottles of wine

SHOES

• 2007: $600 or $700 pair of shoes as "retail therapy
• 2008: No retail therapy because "It just doesn't feel good."

FITNESS TRAINING

• 2007: Fitness trainer three times a week
• 2008: Fitness trainer once a week

This post is part of a series where personal finance expert Dan Solin looks at money secrets that help the rich stay rich. See them all.

To be a successful investor, you need to know the odds.

Investing is far more important than gambling. Yet most gamblers understand the odds before they place a bet. Few investors understand the odds of achieving a return on their investments.

The odds of shooting snake eyes at a craps table are one in thirty-six.

The odds of winning on one number at a roulette table are one in thirty-eight.

Most investors buy actively managed funds, where the fund manager attempts to beat a given benchmark. What are the odds she will be able to do so?

They are one in thirty-six. Sound familiar?

Almost every broker and many advisors will tell you they can pick stocks that will be winners. What are the odds they can deliver?

This post is part of a series where personal finance expert Dan Solin looks at money secrets that help the rich stay rich. See more.

Most investors don't realize that the biggest factor in reducing their returns are the costs associated with their investments.

These costs include commissions, loads, taxes, advisory fees, market-makers, transfer agents and related costs. When you add them up, they can be very significant, reducing overall returns by as much as 40%!

Actively managed mutual funds (funds that try to outperform a given benchmark) have high turnovers of their portfolios. High turnover generates taxable transactions. The tax hit is carried by the investors in the fund, even when they don't sell their shares.

Here is one example:

The actively managed Fidelity Contrafund had a turnover of 60% in 2006. The passive Vanguard 500 Index Fund had a turnover of 7% during the same year.

This post is part of a series where personal finance expert Dan Solin looks at money secrets that help the rich stay rich. See more.

There seems to be no end of brokers, advisors, and talking heads on television who give advice to guileless investors. They discuss where the markets are headed, what stocks to buy "now," what stocks to sell, and which fund managers are "hot."

They endlessly analyze economic data and interpret it for those of us too unschooled to understand it. They tell us how it affects the markets, and what steps we can take to profit from this knowledge and from their insights.

Often they provide this information in breathless reports delivered from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, which serves to heighten the urgency and importance of their message.

For the most part, they are false prophets. The information they impart is irrelevant to a sound investment strategy. In fact, listening to it and relying on it is harmful to your financial well-being.

Here are some examples:

This post is part of a series where personal finance expert Dan Solin looks at money secrets that help the rich stay rich. See more.

It always seemed to me that most people who said that money can't buy happiness didn't have much money.

It would be more accurate to say that if your unhappiness has nothing to do with money, wealth won't make you happy.

The harsh reality is that most of us need a certain amount of money to pay the bills and hopefully provide for retirement with dignity.

Investors who follow the basic lessons that rich people know will be taking a positive step in the direction of responsible, intelligent investing that will help them maximize their returns.

Really rich people understand that money can't buy health. It also can't buy meaningful relationships with family or friends.

This post is part of a series where personal finance expert Dan Solin looks at money secrets that help the rich stay rich. See more.

Rich people own both appreciating and depreciating assets. They know the difference.

Depreciating assets decline in value.

Appreciating assets increase in value.

It is the appreciating assets that permit rich people to purchase the depreciating assets, and not the other way around.

Rich people get rich by buying assets that increase in value slowly over time. They build up businesses. The buy and hold real estate.

They invest in the stock market differently than most individual investors. They determine their asset allocation and buy and hold a globally diversified portfolio of low-cost stock and bond index funds.

This post is part of a series where personal finance expert Dan Solin looks at money secrets that help the rich stay rich. See more.

Is this a good time to buy commodities?

What about emerging markets?

Don't value stocks outperform the markets?

Six months ago, the investment du jour was oil. Clearly, it had no where to go but up. Right?

China and India were increasing consumption at a rapid rate and oil was in short supply. Many analysts were projecting the date when oil supplies would run out altogether.

Six months later, oil tanked.

Did you think that gold was a good hedge against a financial meltdown? If so, your views were shared by many "experts."

Gold reached a record high price of $850 in January 1980. Its current price is $747. What happened?

This post is part of a series where personal finance expert Dan Solin looks at money secrets that help the rich stay rich. See the first five secrets.

I give a lot of talks to groups of investors. I like to ask this question:

How many of you made most of your money investing in the stock market?

Very few hands go up.

I get the same result when I ask: How many of you know someone who made most of his or her money investing in the stock market?

Let's drop to the bottom line:

Rich people invest in themselves.

Poor people invest in "things" that give them instant gratification, like plasma screen TVs and flashy cars.

I don't mean to be glib. Rich people can afford education and great health care. Poor people often can't. A great education and good health positions rich people to get richer.