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Bernie Madoff, Free at Last
- zackattack 16y agoUnnecessarily long. He gets fellow inmates' respect, and he doesn't appear to be having a hard time with doing his hard time.
- bvi 16y agoAgreed. How they managed to spread that over 6 pages is beyond me.
- rbanffy 16y ago> He gets fellow inmates' respect Of course he does. For them, it's like being in the same prison as Ernst Blofeld, Lex Luthor or Ludwig Von Siegfried.
- maukdaddy 16y agoIt's from a magazine. You know...those things that existed before blogs, where the author did real research, actually interviewed people, checked facts, ensured accuracy, etc. I'd much rather read 6 pages of well-written, fact checked magazine than some shitty blog entry that someone spent 5 minutes on just to drive up traffic numbers.
- yurisagalov 16y agoPretty well written story - I was fairly captivated, and I don't even care about him all that much. I'm curious whether this prison system does in fact have better rehabilitation success than regular prison systems. It does sound like the inmates are more well adjusted, and although the article initially describes them as "soft", mob hit men as well as some gruesome murderers and child molesters definitely make that list.
- rbanffy 16y agoMadoff fits the model of a sociopath. They are considered incurable. If he is ever released, he will most probably do it again.
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoAgreed. I don't think he even had a twinge when he went over the line - making up trades to cover a loss. Didn't even perceive it as a decision to be made, it just needed to be done.
- ssn 16y agoGreat photo illustrations.
- motters 16y agoThere's a kind of kudos in having been able to fool so many apparently savvy investors for so long, I guess. Most people of this type - which includes some very successful non-criminals too - seem to have the characteristic of being completely unconcerned about the victims (or "customers"), instead just seeing what they were doing as a demand and supply issue.
- hga 16y agoWell ... the really savvy ones knew he was running a scam, they just thought he was using profits from front running (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running) in his other business to even out the returns of the fund. They didn't think he was so much a crook that it was instead all a Ponzi scheme.
- rbanffy 16y ago> Well ... the really savvy ones knew he was running a scam, When you knowingly invest in a Ponzi scheme (or something like it) you are enabling it and you should be considered an accomplice. It would be hard do prove in a criminal case, but there should be regulations to prevent the investors who should know better and who got handsome returns for enabling him to enable other similar schemes in the future.
- rbanffy 16y agoSometimes I think I stepped into a moderation distortion zone...
- hga 16y agoThen you'll be happy to know that those who received (bogus) returns from the fund are subject to clawbacks, since the money they received wasn't really from a return on their investment but was stolen from other investors. You ... scheme would be hard to justify given that the SEC received so many detailed reports that Madoff was doing something impossible and just blew them off.
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoMakes you wonder, how many more Madoffs are out there? Right now, with your money.
- jswinghammer 16y agoThe Social Security Administration comes to mind.
- arethuza 16y agoDon't most governments behave like Ponzi schemes?