Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders

After reading this article, one has to wonder how much longer the Federal Reserve will be able to keep their "Ponzi Scheme" afloat. Read this article and everyone will understand why the United States Congress defied the American People and voted for the Bankers and Wall Street Bailout.


From left, Shannon Stapleton/Reuters; Patrick Andrade for The New York Times; Nora Feller for The New York Times
TRAPPINGS OF SCANDAL Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme helped to finance his lavish lifestyle until his arrest. From left, Mr. Madoff's beachfront mansion in the Hamptons, his apartment on 64th St. and his villa in France.

By the end, the world itself was too small to support the vast Ponzi scheme constructed by Bernard L. Madoff.

Initially, he tapped local money pulled in from country clubs and charity dinners, where investors sought him out to casually plead with him to manage their savings so they could start reaping the steady, solid returns their envied friends were getting.

The juggernaut began to sputter this fall as investors, rattled by the financial crisis and reaching for cash, started taking money out faster than Mr. Madoff could bring fresh cash in the door. He was arrested on Dec. 11 at his Manhattan apartment and charged with securities fraud, turned in the night before by his sons after he told them his entire business was “a giant Ponzi scheme."

While many of the known victims of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities are prominent Jewish executives and organizations — Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Spitzers, Yeshiva University, the Elie Wiesel Foundation and charities set up by the publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman and the Hollywood director Steven Spielberg — it now appears that anyone with money was a potential target. Indeed, at one point, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a large sovereign wealth fund in the Middle East, had entrusted some $400 million to Mr. Madoff’s firm. FULL STORY.