New York – U.S. regulators working to untangle Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme are probing other money managers suspected of using similar tactics, two people with knowledge of the inquiries said.
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is pursuing at least one case in which investors may have been cheated out of as much as $1 billion, according to one person, who declined to name the manager and asked not to be identified because the probe isn’t public.
Regulators may discover additional Ponzi arrangements as declining stock markets prompt investors to withdraw their cash and they question how their money is being managed. This week, the SEC said it halted what the agency described as a $23 million scam targeting Haitian-Americans, and said the Florida- based operators had tried as recently as last month to bring in more investors.
Investigators haven’t found evidence the suspected frauds are of the same magnitude as in the Madoff case, which would be the biggest of its kind in history, the people said. In a Ponzi scheme, early investors are typically paid with money from later participants.
Madoff, 70, was charged Dec. 11 at federal court in Manhattan with securities fraud after allegedly telling his sons his New York-based investment advisory business had been “one big lie” and that he was “finished.” The SEC, which sued him, is seeking to unravel the extent of the losses and recoup money for investors.
A catalog of Madoff’s assets provided by his attorneys to the SEC on Dec. 31 hasn’t revealed any major sources of additional cash, a person familiar with the matter said. Madoff said before his arrest that he had as much as $300 million remaining, according to the agency’s complaint.
SEC spokesman John Heine declined to comment.
The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Madoff, 08-cv-10791, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
The entire wall street is baloney
He maid one mistake he should of told every one he lost it in the market people would be ok with it sorry to late now
With whats going on now in Eretz Yisroel, these daily stories about Madoff, Mondrowitz and Rubashkin will make it even more difficult to sustain U.S. and global political support for Yiddeshe causes (even though the IDF is really fighting another front in the war against Islamic terrorism).
The SEC should freeze the assets of this newly-found Ponzi scammer, and devulge the name of the scam company, immediately. Otherwise, innocent investors will continue to give the company money, until the scammers are arrested. By then, it will be too late for these new investors to get their money back. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that a yid gave Madoff 10 million dollars 5 days before he was arrested. He is now suing to get his funds back. The SEC is, again, terribly mishandling another case.
Who regulates the regulators? You see the knee jerk response will be more regulation. Nonsense. Established companies in all industries love a lot of regulation… it stifles competition from start-ups and it can insulate the thieves.
It’s almost the same reason why a lot of very wealthy people support higher taxes:
1) They already made their money and lot of it protected in trusts;
2) Wealthy folks, like Buffet, don’t draw a huge salary (income taxes would murder it), so they get paid in dividends;
3) Higher taxes can prevent entrepreneurs from catching up to their wealth status.
In the end we’re going to pay for this with higher higher fees that get passed along to us. Also, we have way too many regualtory bodies. Each state has an insurance commish and another one who regualtes financial markets. When Spitzer was AG, he created another de facto regulatory body. Then you have the regualtors of the exchanges, FINRA (broker dealers), FDIC (banks), NCUA (credit unions) – way too many hands in the cookie jar. The commodities have their own regualtor. This should be streamlined. It’s too confusing for investors and it is too expensive. We should have uniformity with these rules.
to all those commenters! why does everynews have to be in common with rubashkin??
Isn’t it interesting that as soon as Madoff the Goniff told his sons(who worked in his firm at least 10 years) that it was all a “big lie etc.” they immediately picked up a phone and called the FBI…that same morning. Now, don’t you think, they’d call their wives, or for sure their Mother, their lawyers, accountants, Rabbis, etc. that all should take at least 1 day, and perhaps the next day call the FBI.
Of course they knew what was going on for years, this is just a case of an old man protecting his 2 sons, and they are happy to let him do it.
I feel they are all guilty and then some. Maybe the FBI feels that way too, we’ll see.
Norma