Madoff Investigation Spends $27M, Nets $849K

Just about par for the course it seems. Great job, guys.

That’s right – almost a quarter of a billion dollars for administrative expenses. When pushing paper work racks up that kind of tab, it’s time to dash to the nearest mountain top and meditate with utter tranquility on the reasons for which one continues to work for a living..

Well, should have became a lawyer like my mom always said. Too late to change industries?

Link to article

reply to post by Dance4Life
Wow, I could've investigated that case for $25 M.

I would've figured out that he was a swine-dog crook and had enough $$$ leftover to buy myself a sweet little retirement island off the coast of somewhere.

Madoff illustrates a problem with investment outfits that claim to have some special sauce that is too valuable to discuss. People who entrusted their money to Madoff thought he had a clever options trading strategy; they were wrong. Worse, people who entrusted their money to respected banks and investment advisers had no idea that their savings were being passed out the back door to Madoff.

www.washingtonpost.com...

its really disgusting.

hopfully it wont happen again? from same article:

The good news is that Madoff's fraud was so brazen that any future imitators may be spotted.

hmm so brazen that no one noticed this time though...

reply to post by butcherguy


Yeah, I mean I guess there would be upwards of 100,000 forms filed from left and right but seriously I would have sat there and typed them up all day and night for $25.00/hr.

Should have sent those medial jobs out to the unemployed. I'm sure they all didn't require a degree in law, but a degree is being crooked helps apparently.

This isn't a surprise. Lawyers are vultures and it's their job to earn money, which they do by billing out by the ten or 15 minute interval. When someone dies without a will, a lawyer is appointed to ensure that the estate is dispersed properly amongst the heirs but, first, they spend ridiculous amounts of time, billed back to the estate, determining who the heirs are, where the assets are, who should get what etc. End result, the heirs lose out on a nice chunk of what should, rightfully, be theirs.

This is no different. Picard and his henchmen will spend inordinate amounts of time bringing in money so that they can pay themselves for finding the money.

The bilked investors received money from the SIPC already. That will, most likely, be all they ever see.

Of course, given that the fraud itself was so obvious, it's somewhat hard to take pity on the greedy. I've posted about this quite a bit here and, if you want to read up on it, by all means, search for it but, in a nutshell, I called shenanigans more than ten years ago and my clients, who were involved, brought this to the attention of their father who laughed at me and said something along the lines of "I'm getting at least 14% a year for as long as I've been in it and, until someone else can guaranty that kind of return, I'm not pulling out."

I told him that, one day, he'd find his 14% returns gone, along with all of the money he invested over the years.

The first thing he said to my client, who's a very good friend as well, was "your friend was right." Then he broke the news to her.

There are tons of stories like this. Investment advisors, brokers, accountants, laymen, all spotted something wrong and all were ignored. A good friend of mine wound up not talking to his dad for years because he was unable to duplicate the trading record of Madoff and, when he warned his dad, his dad took madoff's side and said he didn't want to risk being thrown out of the fund because his son thought he was a better broker.

Madoff's own rules included never taking investors who worked at other investment houses.

He was blatant and obvious but, sadly, greed is a great motivator.

reply to post by Crakeur


As time goes on I am guessing a number of these feeder funds will be ousted as straight-up fallacies. It is bizarre on the amount of stuff that was not uncovered.