> Madoff's scheme lasted 20 years and collected $50B, including many multi hundred million dollar checks from institutional investors. This. Specifically, it'

> Madoff's scheme lasted 20 years and collected $50B, including many multi hundred million dollar checks from institutional investors. This. Specifically, it's worth noting that Madoff's scheme collapsed in the 2008 financial crisis when people were asking to pull money out of the fund. IOW it worked as long as Madoff could convince more and more people to put money in. When he could no longer make the redemptions, he was caught: > For years, Madoff had simply deposited investors' money in his business account at JPMorganChase and withdrew money from that account when they requested redemptions. He had scraped together just enough money to make a redemption payment on November 19. However, despite cash infusions from several longtime investors, by the week after Thanksgiving it was apparent that there was not enough money to even begin to meet the remaining requests. His Chase account had over $5.5 billion in mid-2008, but by late November was down to $234 million, a fraction of the outstanding redemptions. On December 3, he told longtime assistant Frank DiPascali, who had overseen the fraudulent advisory business, that he was finished. On December 9, he told his brother about the fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Madoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Madoff