That they've managed to recover 76% of the $17 bil. That's quite amazing. I guess a lot of the people that he paid returns too have money and they are clawing it back successfully. It's very good to hear. A 24% haircut is still substantial, but it's more in the range of what you might could happen with many investments and should be survivable. Unless you're one of the people who already killed themselves.
It just creates a new category of victim. Those people who invested with Bernie in good faith and did not do anything criminal are also being punished simply because they spent some of their "profits". I wonder if they also clawed back some of these people's initial investment money? (not profit at all)
I doubt they clawed back any of the initial investment, only the ill gotten gains they received. You have a valid point. If someone is very wealthy and has plenty of assets to be able to pay the clawback, it's one thing. If they spent the money or lost it in other investments and don't have it anymore, it's another. I would think that as part of the process they take that into consideration in how aggressively they go after each investor. But regardless, it sure must suck to have gotten money paid out 20 years ago that you thought was your profit, your money and to know have the govt come looking for it back.
That is especially true if you actually thought you were invested in a real fund or even a 3d party investor where you really were in a fund that put money with Madoff. To get this much back, they must really be digging deep and getting every dime they can find, mostly from people honest enough to have a good paper trail. You have3 to belie3ve anyone who knew this was too good to be true invested through an off shore shell company that is nothing but a memory now and the money has been thuroughly washed.
I don't think anybody thought it was a scam but invested anyway. Because if they did, they would have known enough that it's not worth it. He was providing good returns, but you'd have to be nuts to go into it if you thought it was a scam. Who would risk all their money in a scam for ~10% a year?
I also don't believe that his sons didn't know about it either. They were running his legitimate trading operation just a couple floors away. Here you have your father running a huge fund that's in the billions and they didn't wonder where the trades were being executed? They would almost surely have to know. You'd also think at least some people in the trade execution business would know it too. You'd think they would want to try to get some of his business and they'd be asking, gee, where is all this business going and some would figure out there really isn't any trading at all.
Just to clarify, that's 76 percent of the _real_, as opposed to the fictituous statement value. [a]
Which is still damn good, and a hell of a lot more than expected in the earlydays.
Gotta say I'm still very disturbed that only Madoff (and maybe that accountant) got jail time. The rest bought up Get Out of Jail Free cards.
[a]I remember some stories way back that there were groups that were, indeed, getting payments based on the fake paper value. No idea if this ever really happened.ALSO, many of the people/groups who had already cashed in their (fake) holdings... got to keep them.
Some but not, to the best of my knowledge, had them clawed back.
I don't think any investor thought it was a scam either. Many were told my friends how much money they were making, They just thought he was an investment wizard, who could predict accurately what would go up.
Lots of people claim to do that and they knew people who had apparently made a lot of money with him.
Like the guy from Omaha, whose name I can never remember. Hubbard? At least some people who invested with him or along with him got rich, and people hope to meat someone like that. (BTW, it turns out the land right on the other side of the stream from me is now owned by an a company.... that's owned by that guy.
snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us...
They are the people I am concerned with. Of course, greed factored in. I don't know how to fix the problem so it won't happen again.
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