bernie Madoff: How Did You Spend $50 Billion....Or Did You?

Watching CNBCs special on old Bernies heist made me think of a major question I haven't seen or heard an answer for.

How did Bernie Madoff spend 50 billion dollars?

Or more appropriately, where did all that money go?

Most people can have a grasp on spending a million dollars. Its really not that difficult in todays time, but can you imagine spending 100 million or an insane amount of money such as 1 billion?

Just take into consideration the logistics of spending that kind of money, and what just 1/100th of that kind of money could buy.

Having no idea what the man owns or in this case... owned. here are some ideas that could fit within 500 million dollars.

Ill start with a wealthy lifestyle such as houses, cars, art, vacations and of course your personal jet airplane and luxury yacht. Lets say 8 or 9 large estates. On average a cool 25 mill. each. So housing- 200 million. The fanciest cars a few million each. Lets say a high estimate of 25 million. Throw in 40-50 million in fine art. Scrape up a scroungy 150 million for the most expensive luxury yachts and another 50 mill on the personal jetliner.

aaahhh...so lets see what we have here....200+25+50+150+50= (cue jeopardy theme...)...a whopping 475 million....wait that cant be right!....thats not even 1/100th of the total estimate amount of money the man stole!.

..what the hell happened to the rest of the $49,525,000,000?



I just tried to come up with the most luxurious, most expensive things I could think of and could only add up to 475 million! OK. maybe I left out the hookers and drugs and lush extravagant parties...throw in another 15 million. Well theres the straw that broke the camels back...or wait I guess not, cuz theres still over 49.5 Billion dollars THAT NEED TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR!!!

Im sure the nut job at least took a stab at the stock market, so feel free to chop another 5 billion off the top for being a real go getter but not a having a clue of what he was doing (apparently). Anything after that should be considered criminally insane....oh wait

So wheres the conspiracy (ahem... money?) Oh, I dont know. Id say look at his friends, family, dog, cat, pet fish, favorite sock puppet "palmela handerson" that he keeps under his pilow...... or maybe, just maybe the world leaders that all share that same bed!....and sock???...eeewwww. (too far,... I know, but Ill tell you what. I wouldn't put it past any of them...ANY ) Specifically, the same world leaders that he probably rubs elbows with at those lavish hooker parties...oh ya where was the IRS in all of this? hhhmmm.....did he ever pay taxes? did he not have to comply witrh that dictionary of a tax code that America devotedly follows? Who the hell did his taxes? No red flags at all?

So, 50 billion huh? All gone you say.... Well blow me down! We have in front of our eyes witnessed a miracle. A vanishing act of more money than some complete cities, whole states and even some entire nations..gone, before our very eyes! Who needs Las vegas!? We got Bernie Madoff...

Probably spent millions monthly over long periods of time. Plus keep in mind he probably bought friends massively expensive things. Lots of payoffs and other things I assume. In other words, massive massive greed.

It was a Ponzi scheme.
Wiki: Ponzi scheme

He didn't keep the money. He payed the investors and kept the scheme alive with their own money.
If you want to find the 50 billion dollars, you would have to first trace back all the 'returns on investment' he payed over the time the scheme was active.
The early investors most likely made a lot of money on the scheme. It might be worth investigating how much they had to do with setting up this ponzi scheme.

reply to post by open_eyeballs


Maddof was financing Mossad - which is well evidenced by several investigators - go and research it in more detail on the net.

He was being protected, and Israel was very upset if they intended to send him to jail - so I understand his 'sentence' is to be locked up in the world. As long as he doesn't leave the planet he is considered incarcerated.

reply to post by Dorfl


i understand the ponzi scheme, but they say he lost 50 billion. that means 50 billion gone in some way or another. 50 billion not keeping the ponzi scheme going in that revolving door kind of way.

i doubt it is really 50 billion. thats the number the media has been throwing around though...

reply to post by Amagnon


haha...that sounds about right. i didnt mention what political leaders i had in mind, but these sound close to home.

do u have an article or something?

Who says he spent it all?

There are many ways to make money disappear.

Many over seas banks will let you open an account that cannot be traced back to you if you deposit enough money.

Thats one good example.


Then again, like another poster said, he didn't keep near that much.

I am sitting here trying to find a response...I sat for 15 minutes trying to figure out what you could do with 50 BILLION, holy f c u k !!!

There are so many things I want to say, but I just sit here and cry. You have no idea how utterly mad this makes me. How many people that could have fed, how many people could have had heath care...

For 50 Billion USD you could buy
...250,000 houses at $200,000 each
...500,000 houses at $100,000 each
...two million five hundred thousand cars at $20,000 each

I can do math, I guess the IRS can't...

We need to ask more questions, what the hell can you possibly NEED with that much money? Where is the IRS? There is no way in hell that this guy stole 50 Billion without help from the FED or IRS. What the ^%$#%^% is going on people...common sense proof that something is seriously FUBAR.

reply to post by Dorfl


You are right, that is exactly what happened.

In order to keep the Ponzi scheme going Madoff had to pay out investors what he promised them. All was well and good as long as he had new investors to fund the old ones.

When the economy tanked. Madoff couldn't keep up the ruse and so he had no choice but to tell his sons what he was up to. The bottom fell out.

The money? GONE. No way to recoup it unless you take it away from people who honestly invested with Madoff.

ok. i really havnt paid the most attention to the story.

was the size of the ponzi scheme 50 billion or was the amount of money that did not get returned to investors 50 billion?

From what I have heard hundreds if not thousands of investors did not get their funds back. i thought that total amount came to 50 billion.

if not, obviously the numbers in my op arent correct. either way, in the end I could imagine there are multiple billions gone from what this guy finegled and took for himself...

anyone know?

taking into consideration the scheme itself, I would look at those that "got their money back"..

who were the major private party investors?

think they had no idea what was going on?

please...you dont hand over millions by taking someones word on it.

guaranteed, theres more to it than 1 man dooping everyone.

maybe fund managers andcharitable trusts could have been fooled, but if I were the investigators I would definitely be looking at the private party funds that entered the scheme. And there still s

but im sure the fish and the dog and the cat will all be the focal point of the investigation. gotta get paid for somethin eh?

reply to post by open_eyeballs


What makes you think they are investigating the investors?
From what I read they are categorizing all investors as 'victims'. Even those that actually made money from the scheme.

I fully agree with you that the investors should be checked. I don't believe that none of them knew 'the real deal'. But I doubt that inquiries will be made...too many influential players in this game.

Aside from the seriousness of what really went on with Bernie and the billions, try to imagine what the OP was considering. Spending that kind of money.

Crap, it boogles the mind. I would say most of us don't live anywhere near the million dollar mark, at least I don't and can't imagine.

I might start of with an island somewhere with a staff and i would need the jet to get there and back... bet one can get an island cheap these days.

I would guess his family and associates are watched for their spending habits these days....

reply to post by Dorfl


thats just the problem, they probably will not investigate the investors...

hate to say it...but its as easy as one website puts it..

enterprise corruption

its not on small scale, but massive scale. i cant see why this would be any different.

Madoff threw the $50 Billion number out himself. And investigation shows the number to be $15-20 Billion.

At least a Billion has been recovered from immediately accessible assets and financial instruments with something like 5-6 Billion more to be recovered from feeder funds and other sources, so far.

One has to recall that if Madoff was acting totally above board investing on Wall Street, his clients losses from 2007 to December 2008 when he was turned in, would have been something like 40%.

But the money never really was invested and those who cashed out early did well. Much of the money dissipated on transaction fees and bonuses.

There are the inevitable rumours, as he was Jewish, that money was siphoned to Israel, Mossad, etc. No evidence of this and ironically, an equal opportunity crook, the ones who took the hardest hits were often Jews themselves.

It's thought Madoff was acting as a front, in part, for Mob money laundering.
His lack of proper bookkeeping might imply large cash transactions rolled into the mix.

The story will come out as his confederates and associates are investigated and charged. Watch for what comes out of the current plea bargaining of Madoff right hand man, Frank DiPascali. He will be naming names and the whole story will start unraveling.


Mike









[edit on 15-6-2009 by mmiichael]

reply to post by mmiichael


thanks for the post. i had a feeling the number was one the media took and ran with. of course when you are talking about that kind of money,its really unimagineable anyway...

wonder why he would throw out a number like 50 billion? narcicism?

Originally posted by open_eyeballs
reply to post by mmiichael

 

thanks for the post. i had a feeling the number was one the media took and ran with. of course when you are talking about that kind of money,its really unimagineable anyway...

wonder why he would throw out a number like 50 billion? narcicism?

If you calculated all the money lost over time, say on investments that dropped in value with the Stock Market crash, the sum total might have been $50 Million.

Madoff was giving himself up and knew he was going to fry. The penalty would be the same even if it were $50 Million.

He would want to prevent them claiming there was more than he originally stated.

Also, the bigger the amount the more they would want to protect him.

Still lots to come out on this story.

Mike

Originally posted by Amagnon
Maddof was financing Mossad - which is well evidenced by several investigators - go and research it in more detail on the net.

He was being protected, and Israel was very upset if they intended to send him to jail - so I understand his 'sentence' is to be locked up in the world. As long as he doesn't leave the planet he is considered incarcerated.

Yeah, he was helping the jews by screwing them over. Makes perfect sense.

One of his bilked investors told a story (I heard it second hand) about how he tried to get Bernie to take on an investment from his friend. It was big money hundred million or more. Bernie and the investor flew to the south of france to meet with the potential new investor. Israeli guy. Bernie met with him and during the course of the meeting the potential investor made reference to working for the Israeli gov't and wanting to park some money for safe keeping. Bernie and his investor went back to NYC and after a week or two the investor started calling Bernie about the new guy. "Will you take him?" and so on. Bernie wouldn't answer, Bernie wouldn't take his calls. So he showed up at Bernie's office and Bernie asked the guy "what branch of the Israeli gov't is he?"

Mossad was the answer.

Get the F out and be grateful that I let you keep investing with me was Bernie's response.

He couldn't take their money and risk being killed. Screwing over regular rich people is one thing, screwing over a gov't is another. Besides, his partners in this wouldn't want to go up against the Mossad. That leads me to...

Originally posted by mmiichael

It's thought Madoff was acting as a front, in part, for Mob money laundering.
His lack of proper bookkeeping might imply large cash transactions rolled into the mix

www.abovetopsecret.com...

My guess is that he either started out as partners in crime as Frank was there, pretty much, from the beginning.

reply to post by Crakeur

i know he screwed over some jewish trust funds and such so its not like hes out to enrich the overall jewish population..it doesnt seem he had a conscience when it came to screwing anyone.

and what you say makes plenty of sense, but from what i have understood about the jewish culture is that it is very close-knit...i think it would be a consideration to look at some of his closer family friends...it would be interesting to know if he had any close ties with jewish leaders and/or american jewish politicians...

but like you said...israeli government money, i highly doubt, but private jewish funds that could be linked with israeli and/ or american politicians wouldnt suprise me at all...

i would love to see a timeline of some of the transactions, and their payouts...kinda like....

"hey bro, come invest with me for a year and I will get you a return of 100%..then you kick me back some of that green..."...dont ask...dont tell...

this, to me, doesnt sound like it is an impossible scenario...especially considering the length of time this scheme took place...of course, it is all speculation on my part...

[edit on 17-6-2009 by open_eyeballs]

Originally posted by open_eyeballs
i know he screwed over some jewish trust funds and such so its not like hes out to enrich the overall jewish population..it doesnt seem he had a conscience when it came to screwing anyone.

his list of bilked investors included hedge funds, banks, synagogues, family trusts, individuals, businesses, pension funds, universities etc. He didn't discriminate when it came to the type of investor. what he did do is refuse money from anyone who might question his methods. Those questions would lead to his exposure so he stuck to those he knew would be happy to make their money whilst ignorant to how they made their money.

Originally posted by open_eyeballs
i think it would be a consideration to look at some of his closer family friends...it would be interesting to know if he had any close ties with jewish leaders and/or american jewish politicians...

His closes faimly friends were his biggest victims. Men who he called surrogate fathers, men who treated him as a son. He took more from them than anyone else. His last big score was from Carl Shapiro who was one of his first investors. Some say Carl was in on the game but, if he was, why would he give Madoff more money when it was beyond recovery.

I recall a Jersey politician as being included in the bilked list as well. Not sure if that gives him close ties to anyone in politics.

Originally posted by open_eyeballs
i would love to see a timeline of some of the transactions, and their payouts...kinda like....

never going to happen. Apparently, there isn't much in the way of client records.

Originally posted by open_eyeballs
"hey bro, come invest with me for a year and I will get you a return of 100%..then you kick me back some of that green..."...dont ask...dont tell...

If the rumors of mafia involvement are true, he wasn't in a position to bring anyone else in and, besides, up until the hedge funds started asking for their money, he didn't need to bring in new investors. His track record, his secrecy, his impossible to enter without great credentials, his crazy rules, his self made legend all added up to a guy people were begging to take on. He didn't need to promise anyone anything.