Articles Posted in Federal Crimes

Let the games begin! As local as Boston and as distant as the globe will reach! The adventure of pointing fingers and looking for bodies to blame, as expected, has begun. Defense Attorneys for everybody! Everybody pays!

Bernard Madoff (hereinafter, the “Defendant”), talking in 2001 about what fed the Internet bubble said “You had a lot of novice investors who got into the market looking for easy money, without any regard to the fundamentals. These stocks were running on fumes.”

You would almost think that the Defendant did not have a lot of faith in investors, regulatory agencies such as the Security Exchange Commission and the market in general, wouldn’t you?

Well, I guess now we know why. He, himself, was apparently engaged in a huge fraud and getting away with it.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you have heard that the Defendant is accused of devestated the international economic world, when it was already reeling, through what is alleged to be a fifty billion dollar scam, the largest such fraud in history. For more background information, you may want to check out Tuesday’s blog, entitled, Boston Is Hit, Along With The Rest Of The Country, By Financial Guru And His Use Of A Boston-Originated Method Of Fraud (The Madoff Nightmare Part One.

The question of what to do next appears to be a nasty little thing for which there is no clear answer. Therefore, filling that vacuum, we move to other, and perhaps more lucrative, questions. The questions include such topics as how any scam of this size could remain a secret for so long, who was involved, who else is out there doing similar things and, of course, who got off easy.

In short, the questions are “Who else can we blame?” and perhaps more importantly, “Who else can help finance the cleanup?”

Hey, it’s what we do.
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This holiday season, so many religions and traditions call for gift-giving. Sometimes, those gifts are a big surprise. One gentleman from out of state has been given a surprise gift from the government because of the gifts he has given throughout the country, including the Boston area, big time. The gift he received is the need of a criminal defense attorney. The wide-spread gift he gave? Well, that would be the gift of financial ruin.

You already know his name. It is Bernard Madoff (hereinafter, the “Defendant”). He is a 70-year-old former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market, who has now been awarded the country’s bracelets of shame. Last Thursday, he taken out of his house by United States marshals and charged with securities fraud by federal authorities.

Ironically, the Defendant’s gift of restraints and forced government housing was connected to charity and gift work throughout the nation. His actions have apparently brought about the destruction and near-destruction of various charities and philanthropies throughout the country. That’s right….that means fewer gifts for the under-privileged. It also means the same thing for victims of every financial level because they all have one thing in common now. They have been victims of white collar crime in a big way to the tune of approximately fifty billion dollars.

Such a loss is kind of hard to swallow, especially in such difficult economic times. Actually, it was the market’s recent crash that finally brought the Defendant’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme to light. The Defendant himself is said to have “come clean”. He has admitted that his money management operations were “all just one big lie” and “a giant Ponzi scheme.” .

You may be unfamilier with the term “Ponzi scheme”. For those so uninitiated, it is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high profits to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business. It is named after Charles Ponzi who apparently introduced the scheme to the United States in the early 1900’s from…of all places…Boston. Because the invested capital is not earning a sufficient return on its own, Ponzi schemes usually eventually collapse under their own weight.

So much for a “I never thought it could happen…” , or, perhaps more formally, “Whodathunkit” defense.
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