Normal tech support phone call: "Press 1 for help with e-mail. Press 2 to have your password reset."

Madoff tech support phone call: "Hello, how can I help you dummy up some trading records today?"

The investigation of Bernie Madoff's fraudulent financial empire is leading to more arrests. Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers employed by the Ponzi schemer, were arrested by the FBI on Friday morning. The charges include conspiracy for falsifying books and records. They are accused of doing the deed for the boss and accepting hush money -- in the form of 25% raises and net bonuses of $60,000 -- to keep the scam afloat.

Continue reading Two more arrests in Madoff saga

Two more arrests in Madoff saga originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Bernie Madoff is getting used to his new neighbors. Gone are the days of Montauk and Manhattan, and he isn't sharing his space with topless dancers.

Now, he says goodnight to a drug pusher, chills with a former mobster, and hangs with a convicted spy ... and these guys are probably saying, "I hang around with Bernie Madoff." The former financier Ponzi schemer spends his evenings walking laps around the prison track at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, not far from Raleigh, N.C.

Continue reading Madoff: Chillin' with mobsters and spies

Madoff: Chillin' with mobsters and spies originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Allen Stanford gets kicked around, but Bernie Madoff can clearly throw down some serious smack. While the former's being moved from one facility to another because he's lost some ground on the cell block, Madoff just earned himself some props.

The engineer of the largest (known) Ponzi scheme in history apparently got into an argument with another geriatric inmate at the Butner, North Carolina federal prison. Of course, it was over the stock market. Does it really make sense to outmaneuver a guy who never needed to know what the market was doing to deliver double-digit returns?

Well, push came to shove, as they say, with the "attacker" stumbling and looking up at a mean, mean Madoff. He got up and ran off.

Continue reading Madoff fights to win, gets some cred

Madoff fights to win, gets some cred originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Even with the ringleader in jail, the pursuit of Bernie Madoff doesn't seem to be finished. Sunday night, the trustee who's winding down the Madoff company said on 60 Minutes that Madoff's two sons (Mark and Andrew), brother (Peter) and niece (Shana) will be slapped with a $198 million suit. They are alleged to have known about the Ponzi scheme, according to the trustee, Irving Picard and his chief counsel, David Sheehan.

Sheehan and Picard are also working under the assumption that there is still some money hidden, quite a lot of it, in fact. Picard told the show, "We'd assume it's millions and millions of dollars." Yet, this probably wouldn't help with the task in front of them.

Continue reading Madoff family to be sued for $198 million

Madoff family to be sued for $198 million originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Fairfield Greenwich Group has agreed to pay an $8 million settlement to a small group of investors in Massachusetts that lost money through the Madoff scam. This is expected to be a full repayment. Fairfield is also going to pay a $500,000 fine to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As part of the deal, the feeder fund does not have to admit any wrongdoing.

According to a report in USA Today, this is the first Madoff case in which a regulator secured some relief for investors. While this only addresses a relative handful of investors, the Massachusetts Secretary of State believes that it may become a precedent for other actions.

Continue reading Massachusetts and Madoff feeder fund come to agreement

Massachusetts and Madoff feeder fund come to agreement originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fairfield Greenwich Group is trying to play ball, but Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin isn't listening.

Instead, he's sending out notices to find all the investors who lost money with Fairfield as a result of its investments in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The state does not intend to settle, though negotiations between the state and Fairfield are ongoing.

Continue reading Massachusetts not backing down on Madoff feeder fund

Massachusetts not backing down on Madoff feeder fund originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Bernie Madoff's long-time go-to guy, Frank DiPascali, isn't trying to beat the system any more. He has decided to plead guilty to criminal charges spanning more than two decades.

DiPascali is the first of Madoff's employees to be charged. Aside from Madoff, the only other person greeted by the criminal justice system has been outside auditor David Friehling, who isn't going as easily as DiPascali (he's pled not guilty).

If all goes as planned, DiPascali will plead guilty in U.S. District Court on Monday at 3 PM. For now, everyone's remaining tight-lipped, and the terms have not yet been revealed.

Continue reading Madoff lieutenant gives in, to plead on Monday

Madoff lieutenant gives in, to plead on Monday originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

David Friehling is only the second person to face criminal charges in the Bernard Madoff debacle. He served as Madoff's auditor from 1991 to 2008, though it's hard to say if they'll resume their relationship as cellies. For now, Friehling has only been charged (innocent until proven guilty, and such) with securities fraud, abetting investment adviser fraud and filing false reports with the SEC. On five of the six charges filed, he faces a 20-year maximum.

It's alleged that Friehling didn't conduct "meaningful" audits while in Madoff's employ, despite issuing reports saying that he'd done his job -- which paid close to $15,000 a month (no work for big pay . . . where do I sign up?). In particular, he's said to have not bothered to verify Madoff's business assets, revenue sources or bank accounts. This is no-brainer stuff for an auditor.

Continue reading Madoff bean-counter pleads not guilty

Madoff bean-counter pleads not guilty originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Bernie Madoff, at 71 years old, may be staring down what would be effectively a life sentence. The prosecution and defense have vastly different views heading into court today, but the answer will come at 10 AM (EDT), when the hearing is scheduled to begin. Approximately 100 letters have been sent to the judge, and 10 people will relate their opinions directly.

Madoff's family members are not expected to be in the courtroom for the sentencing, as they haven't been to any of his appearances following his arrest last September.

Continue reading Madoff sentence to come today

Madoff sentence to come today originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

How much money does Madoff really have? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It looks like America has shut down until 2009. And that's probably a good idea because there were so many bad ones in 2008. Bad ideas are like vampires. They charm their way into the good graces of a host society and then they suck the blood right out of them.

Although they all didn't just pop into our lives in 2008, these eight ideas reached a peak of awfulness in 2008:

• Deregulation is good. The wave of deregulation that started in the early 1980s has created enormous problems for society. Sure there were some bad regulations on the books, but just one deregulated industry -- the $62 trillion credit default swaps (CDS) market -- has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in the bailout of American International Group (NYSE: AIG).
• If you can lend against it, securitize it. Securitization -- the practice of buying, credit-rating, and bundling loans backed by assets like mortgages, credit card receivables, and leveraged buyout loans -- created the illusion that you could mix risky loans in with safer ones and you could earn above-average returns with no risk. Bad call -- securitization has spread toxic waste around the world from Iceland to Whitefish Bay, Wis.
• Home-ownership is good for everyone. The hungry maw of securitization created enormous demand for new mortgages. And that led mortgage originators to lend to people who couldn't afford to pay back the loans. The $1.3 trillion subprime mortgage market was born and it grew so big that its collapse refused to remain contained. In 2004 Bush bragged about home ownership reaching 69.2% -- three million foreclosures later it seems we should be careful what we wish for.
• Leverage up your balance sheet 30:1 or more. In 2004, the SEC gave financial institutions (FIs) discretion to borrow more money than they had ever borrowed before. Most banks and hedge funds borrowed as much as $35 for every $1 of equity. If they had used their $340 billion in equity to buy the $13 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), a 3% decline in the MBSs and CDOs value would have wiped out the FI's capital.

Continue reading 2008's eight worst ideas

2008's eight worst ideas originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ever since the $50 billion Madoff Securities Ponzi scheme came to light, I have been wondering whether there are others out there that have yet to be discovered. While the facts of how Madoff was able to keep his scheme going remain elusive, it appears that a recent $7 billion cash call made it clear that he did not have enough cash on hand. If Madoff was indeed a Ponzi scheme, he would have needed to raise $7 billion from new investors to meet those redemption requests -- since he could not raise that much new money he folded his hand.

It is hard to believe that Madoff is the only scam artist out there. Why was Madoff able to pull it off for so long? Are there other funds with similar characteristics? Is James Simons' $35.4 billion (October 2007 assets under management) Renaissance Technologies such a fund? The answer to the last question is that it's possible but unlikely.

Since enough is not yet known about where Madoff's money came from and where it went, we don't know how he pulled it off. But, as I posted, there are four key elements that probably contributed:

• Unrealistically steady returns that others could not duplicate. Madoff reported 1% a month returns through a split conversion strategy that others could not duplicate but that investors wanted to believe was real;
• Lack of independent auditing. Madoff had a three-person audit firm -- one of whose members was a 78-year- old living in Florida;

Continue reading Could James Simons be the next Bernie Madoff?

Could James Simons be the next Bernie Madoff? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 21 Dec 2008 10:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The $50 billion Madoff Securities scandal could have been prevented easily. So could much of the corporate and investment fraud that's taken place over the last couple of decades. Why? All these frauds shared at least one thing in common -- the people who committed them all produced their own financial statements. In my limited experience in academia, I have never seen a single student grade their own test or paper. So why should business executives be able to write their own report cards?

We don't know much about the Madoff scandal, but there's no question that Madoff securities could not have gotten away with it if a completely independent entity had been generating financial statements for investors. Instead of spending decades cranking out fraudulent statements that showed investors making 10% returns each year, an independent auditor would have stopped Madoff in his tracks.

Of course, for such an independent entity to work correctly, it would need to be structured, paid and staffed in the right way. As I suggested in Value Leadership back in 2003, the government would create an independent group of auditors who would create financial statements for investors. This group would be paid from taxes levied on corporations and its people would be promoted based on their ability to geneate timely, accurate, and thorough financial statements.

Continue reading A simple solution to investment fraud

A simple solution to investment fraud originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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.

Continue reading $50 billion investment fraud: Could you be next?

$50 billion investment fraud: Could you be next? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 13 Dec 2008 08:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.