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Bernie Madoff, dead at 82.

Poor guy. He ripped off the wrong people - rich people. If he had just ripped off the poor he would have .... made off with millions and would be alive and free.
 
angrysoba said:
Poor guy. He ripped off the wrong people - rich people. If he had just ripped off the poor he would have .... made off with millions and would be alive and free.
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For some definitions of "rich people"

Many of those you call "rich people" were rich because they spent their entire working lives of 30 to 40 years saving for their retirement. Madoff's fraud wiped out their entire life savings in a heartbeat.

Many of those "rich people" were also charities, and they were wiped out as well.

Madoff preyed on the vulnerable for his own personal greed, he deserved everything he got, and if there is a hell, he will rot in it.
 
smartcooky said:
For some definitions of "rich people"
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Yep. I think most people would define Steven Spielberg as rich.

If he had just ripped off poor people he could have been president of the United States. You rip off rich people and everyone gets all indignant. On the other hand, the sub-prime mortgage scandal which basically affected the poor or at least those not well off resulted in ... how many imprisonments? I don’t recall. Maybe none at all.

Anyway, it is amusing to see people getting all Biblical and theological about Hell and divine retribution etc... life ain’t that simple.
 
angrysoba said:
Yep. I think most people would define Steven Spielberg as rich..
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Nice cherry pick, but if you knew anything at all about Madoff's victims, you would know that people like Spielberg were a tiny, miniscule minority of the victims. By far, the vast majority of victims whose life savings became toast, were old, retired people, who had run Mom & Pop businesses for years, or who were factory workers, people who had worked all their lives with a view to living out their retirement comfortably. They weren't greedy people who invested in risky ventures. Many of them didn't even know their investments were with Madoff, and an American uncle of mine was one of them...

He didn't even know who Madoff was when the story broke and was arrested. His investments had all been with a broker. Uncle Ted had a small leathergoods and shoe repair business he and and my aunt had run for 40 years in rural Vermont. He retired two weeks before the story broke. It devastated him, everything gone in a second. It took a huge toll on his health, and he died in 2010.

So yeah, I think your characterisation of Madoff's victims as "rich people" who could afford it is load of ******* crap.
 
angrysoba said:
Poor guy. He ripped off the wrong people - rich people. If he had just ripped off the poor he would have .... made off with millions and would be alive and free.
Click to expand...

smartcooky said:
Nice cherry pick, but if you knew anything at all about Madoff's victims, you would know that people like Spielberg were a tiny, miniscule minority of the victims. By far, the vast majority of victims whose life savings became toast, were old, retired people, who had run Mom & Pop businesses for years, or who were factory workers, people who had worked all their lives with a view to living out their retirement comfortably. They weren't greedy people who invested in risky ventures. Many of them didn't even know their investments were with Madoff, and an American uncle of mine was one of them...

He didn't even know who Madoff was when the story broke and was arrested. His investments had all been with a broker. Uncle Ted had a small leathergoods and shoe repair business he and and my aunt had run for 40 years in rural Vermont. He retired two weeks before the story broke. It devastated him, everything gone in a second. It took a huge toll on his health, and he died in 2010.

So yeah, I think your characterisation of Madoff's victims as "rich people" who could afford it is load of ******* crap.
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I don't think that's what angrysoba said at all :confused: :confused:

I think what angrysoba said was that the only reason why Bernie Madoff was brought to justice is that some of the people (and institutions ?) he ripped off were rich and consequentially sufficiently influential to mean that charges had to be brought.

Had he just ripped off "the little people" then angrysoba seems to doubt whether there would have been a reckoning.
 
The Don said:
I don't think that's what angrysoba said at all :confused: :confused:

I think what angrysoba said was that the only reason why Bernie Madoff was brought to justice is that some of the people (and institutions ?) he ripped off were rich and consequentially sufficiently influential to mean that charges had to be brought.

Had he just ripped off "the little people" then angrysoba seems to doubt whether there would have been a reckoning.
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I am not sure you are right there. Robert Maxwell met his nemesis when he ripped off DAILY MIRROR pensioners. He set up dozens of cardboard corporations to syphon the money off. When one collapsed then the others followed like dominoes. One black hole after another.

Kenneth Lay of Enron was another:

Lay left behind "a legacy of shame" characterized by "mismanagement and dishonesty".[8] In 2009 a list posted on portfolio.com ranked Lay as the third-worst American CEO of all time.[9] His actions were the catalyst for subsequent and fundamental corporate reform in regard to "standards of leadership, governance, and accountability"
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wiki

The reason Madoff, Maxwell, Lay et al got so much wide publicity is because of the scale of their crimes, not because 'it involved the rich'.
 
Vixen said:
I am not sure you are right there.
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Not my opinion - I was merely attempting to state my understanding of angrysoba's post.

Vixen said:
Robert Maxwell met his nemesis when he ripped off DAILY MIRROR pensioners. He set up dozens of cardboard corporations to syphon the money off. When one collapsed then the others followed like dominoes. One black hole after another.
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Except he didn't.

He was dead before any of this came to light and it came to light because his businesses went under when the banks called in their loans and then it became apparent that he'd been using pension fund money to prop up his businesses.

His sons were acquitted so they didn't face their nemesis either.

Vixen said:
Kenneth Lay of Enron was another:


wiki

The reason Madoff, Maxwell, Lay et al got so much wide publicity is because of the scale of their crimes, not because 'it involved the rich'.
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Enron was a bit more complicated.
 
smartcooky said:
Nice cherry pick, but if you knew anything at all about Madoff's victims, you would know that people like Spielberg were a tiny, miniscule minority of the victims. By far, the vast majority of victims whose life savings became toast, were old, retired people, who had run Mom & Pop businesses for years, or who were factory workers, people who had worked all their lives with a view to living out their retirement comfortably. They weren't greedy people who invested in risky ventures. Many of them didn't even know their investments were with Madoff, and an American uncle of mine was one of them...

He didn't even know who Madoff was when the story broke and was arrested. His investments had all been with a broker. Uncle Ted had a small leathergoods and shoe repair business he and and my aunt had run for 40 years in rural Vermont. He retired two weeks before the story broke. It devastated him, everything gone in a second. It took a huge toll on his health, and he died in 2010.

So yeah, I think your characterisation of Madoff's victims as "rich people" who could afford it is load of ******* crap.
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I'm sorry for your uncle Ted, and the fact that Madoff's dealings hit close to home explains your vehemence about the topic, but you completely missed what I was saying, as the Don pointed out.

If he had merely been defrauding people like your Uncle Ted, do you think that he would have received the weirdly medieval 159 year sentence?

I doubt it, and I point to the sub-prime mortgage scandal as an example. Madoff got his comeuppance because he ripped off the "wrong people".
 
Vixen said:
I am not sure you are right there. Robert Maxwell met his nemesis when he ripped off DAILY MIRROR pensioners. He set up dozens of cardboard corporations to syphon the money off. When one collapsed then the others followed like dominoes. One black hole after another.
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He fell off (jumped off?) a bloody boat!

Vixen said:
Kenneth Lay of Enron was another:
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Lay died on July 5, 2006, while vacationing in Colorado.
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Terrible examples.




Vixen said:
The reason Madoff, Maxwell, Lay et al got so much wide publicity is because of the scale of their crimes, not because 'it involved the rich'.
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I'm not talking about publicity; I am talking about sentencing!

Do you remember the sub-prime mortgage crisis? That received a hell of a lot of publicity. Did it receive a hell of a lot of punishment?
 
angrysoba said:
I'm not talking about publicity; I am talking about sentencing!
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Yeah, but that publicity really impacted how much time Ken Lay could spend at the country club. Lots of folks there were not as fawning as they once had been, and there was pointing and whispering. You have no idea how much that can hurt.
 
smartcooky said:
Nice cherry pick, but if you knew anything at all about Madoff's victims, you would know that people like Spielberg were a tiny, miniscule minority of the victims. By far, the vast majority of victims whose life savings became toast, were old, retired people, who had run Mom & Pop businesses for years, or who were factory workers, people who had worked all their lives with a view to living out their retirement comfortably. They weren't greedy people who invested in risky ventures. Many of them didn't even know their investments were with Madoff, and an American uncle of mine was one of them...

He didn't even know who Madoff was when the story broke and was arrested. His investments had all been with a broker. Uncle Ted had a small leathergoods and shoe repair business he and and my aunt had run for 40 years in rural Vermont. He retired two weeks before the story broke. It devastated him, everything gone in a second. It took a huge toll on his health, and he died in 2010.

So yeah, I think your characterisation of Madoff's victims as "rich people" who could afford it is load of ******* crap.
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Agree 100%.Many of Madoff's victims seem to have been middle class.
But then, a lot of people on the left like to think in terms of Rich and Poor, with anyhing inbetween being contrary to their ideology.
 
smartcooky said:
....
He didn't even know who Madoff was when the story broke and was arrested. His investments had all been with a broker. Uncle Ted had a small leathergoods and shoe repair business he and and my aunt had run for 40 years in rural Vermont. He retired two weeks before the story broke. It devastated him, everything gone in a second. It took a huge toll on his health, and he died in 2010.
....
Click to expand...

That's an important and often underreported aspect of the Madoff scandal. Madoff was taking money from retail money managers and "investing" it for them, minus their fees. The original "investor" never had a chance to look past the face of the guy he was handing his money to.

A (respected) financial advisor and author who has specials on PBS has a list of ways to avoid fraud. One is never write a check directly to your advisor, and another is never let your advisor keep your money in his accounts, rather than a custodial account in your name.
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/ricedelman/2009/02/12/dont-become-a-fraud-victim-n957233
https://www.edelmanfinancialengines...sting/10-taboos-between-you-and-your-advisor/

Another account of how he got away with it:
https://rodgers-associates.com/blog/lessons-bernie-madoff-scandal/
 
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