Rich Guys Club

Victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme are being warned of another possible scam – a suspicious Web site claiming $1.3 billion has been recovered from a Madoff hideout in Malaysia and asking investors to submit personal information to obtain their share of the money.

The “look-alike” site copies the artwork and structural design of the Securities Investor Protection Corp. (SIPC), the group formed by Congress to assist customers of insolvent brokerage firms that has issued the warning. It claims to represent the “International Securities Investor Protection Corp.” in what is described as a classic phishing site.

“We know from information provided to us by individuals that this bogus group is already attempting to obtain funds and confidential financial information from investors in the U.S.,” SIPC president Stephen Harbeck said. “We intend to use every available means to shut down this illicit operation.”

Read More: – By Drew Sandholm, ABC News

A senior executive who worked for Bernard L. Madoff for more than 30 years was arrested Thursday on federal fraud and conspiracy charges, including claims that he helped Mr. Madoff survive a cash crisis that almost derailed the gigantic Ponzi scheme five years ago.

The executive, Daniel Bonventre, 63, joined the Madoff firm in 1968 and served as its director of operations, overseeing the back office record-keeping staff, since at least 1978. He was arrested by federal agents at about 6 a.m. Thursday at his apartment on East 79th Street.

In a criminal complaint filed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Bonventre was accused of doctoring records to conceal for a decade that the firm was being propped up with money illegally siphoned from investor accounts and that money borrowed by the firm was illegally used to cover withdrawals when the Ponzi scheme faced a cash shortage beginning in late 2005.

Read More: – By Diana B. Henriques, the New York Times

Peter Madoff, the brother, was the compliance officer for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York and held an executive post with Madoff Securities International Ltd in London.

Bernard Madoff’s sons, Mark and Andrew, helped run the firm’s market-making division, which was separate from the investment arm where Madoff perpetrated his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, the WSJ said.

Lawyers for Peter Madoff didn’t respond to requests for comment, while Martin Flumenbaum, a lawyer for Mark and Andrew Madoff, said in a statement they had no prior knowledge of Bernard Madoff’s crimes and contacted authorities immediately after their father told them of his fraud, the paper said.

Read More: – Reporting by Archana Shankar in Bangalore, Reuters

The brother, sons and niece of epic swindler Bernard Madoff have agreed to an asset freeze in a lawsuit brought by the trustee winding down the Madoff firm, according to court documents filed on Friday.

The filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York said Madoff’s brother Peter Madoff, sons Andrew and Mark and niece Shana had agreed to disclose their finances within 30 days and disclose any changes monthly.

Read More: – Reporting by Grant McCool, Reuters

The Securities and Exchange Commission named six people Wednesday to lead new investigative units as the agency reorganizes its enforcement efforts.

The SEC was scorched by its failure to detect the stunning, long-running fraud by money manager Bernard Madoff despite numerous red flags and credible warnings.

The new units and their leaders are: asset management, headed by Bruce Karpati and Robert Kaplan; market abuse, led by Daniel Hawke; structured and new products, Kenneth Lench; foreign corrupt practices, Cheryl Scarboro; and municipal securities and public pensions, Elaine Greenberg.

SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami also announced new measures designed to encourage companies and individuals to cooperate more closely in providing information.

Read More: – By Marcy Gordon, the Associated Press

YOU CALLED IT. In our Financial Villain of the Decade poll, SmartMoney readers declared Bernard Madoff the hands-down winner out of a field of nine. Given his notoriety, perhaps, that’s hardly an upset. However, the thousands of you who participated did surprise us with your write-in candidate, Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.): He grabbed enough votes to beat out the likes of imprisoned WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and Enron poster boy Kenneth Lay.

The survey kicked off our Poll of the Decade series, which will ask readers to weigh in on the people, institutions and decisions that impacted the world of finance—and the economy—over the last 10 years. In the coming days, we will solicit your opinions on topics such as Biggest Financial Blunders of the Decade and Biggest Financial Heroes of the Decade and will share the results. (Visit our homepage today to vote for Investment of the Decade.)

In all, 37% of you chose Madoff, who of course has come to symbolize the rampant greed and unchecked financial markets that propelled the economic meltdown. The disgraced financier pleaded guilty in March to operating a vast, multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme, and is serving a 150-year sentence in federal prison in Butner, N.C. Meanwhile, many have been riveted by the dismantling of his estate, which saw his Long Island beach house auctioned off in October for $9.41 million. And as the investigation into Madoff’s scheme drags on, former clients continue to search for any assets to offset their losses.

Though much of the media spotlight has focused on Madoff, and on exorbitantly paid Wall Street bankers and CEOs, it is clear in our poll that readers feel politicians share the blame for the financial crisis.

Read More: – Clancy Nolan, Smart Money

Reporting by Rachelle Younglai, from Reuters

At a U.S. House of Representatives hearing, Madoff victims described how the imprisoned swindler destroyed their lives and demanded that Congress take action.
“We need your help now,” Jeannene Langford told the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets. Langford said the money she had invested with Madoff represented 30 years of savings.
Under current law, some groups of Madoff victims have been told that they are either not eligible to be compensated the full amount of their last balance statement, or will not be repaid at all.

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From Reuters

When Bernie Madoff, who engineered history’s biggest Ponzi scheme, was arrested, FBI Special Agent Kang was right at his side. And less than a year later, there was Kang again, in a “perp walk,” shuffling alongside a handcuffed Raj Rajaratnam, the former hedge fund star at Galleon accused of earning millions off illegally obtained stock tips.
The question on the minds of investors, managers and lawyers inside and outside the hedge fund industry today is, who’s next?
Of course, no one knows for sure. But court documents and interviews with many industry sources familiar with the case show that agent Kang may be focusing in on Steven A. Cohen and his $12.9 billion SAC Capital Advisors, L.P.

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By David Camp

Reflecting on Norman Rockwell’s famous Thanksgiving painting, Freedom from Want, a thoughtful essayist recently wrote: “Freedom from Want… is especially telling, for the scene it depicts is joyous but defiantly unostentatious. There is a happily gathered family, there are plain white curtains, there is a large turkey, there are some celery stalks in a dish, and there is a bowl of fruit, but there is not a hint of overabundance, overindulgence, elaborate table settings, ambitious seasonal centerpieces, or any other conventions of modern-day shelter-mag porn. It was freedom from want, not freedom to want—a world away from the idea that the patriotic thing to do in tough times is go shopping.”

O.K., self-aggrandizement alert: that essayist was me, and the piece was “Rethinking the American Dream,” from the April 2009 issue of V.F. And that article paved the way for a sequel of sorts, “Norman Rockwell’s American Dream,” that ran in the November 2009 issue. In pondering Rockwell’s painting in the context of recent times, illustrator Ross MacDonald and I considered what an inversion of Freedom from Want would look like. We decided that its star would be inmate number 61727-054, Bernie Madoff, who would step into the Grandma role. And we thought that this new tableau, depicting the notoriously incarcerated and soon-to-be-incarcerated, should be called Wanting for Freedom.

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United Press International

NEW YORK, Dec. 2 (UPI) — A Boston philanthropist in frail health is one of the largest beneficiaries of Bernard Madoff’s fraud, papers filed by court trustee Irving Picard said.

In court papers, Picard alleges Carl Shapiro, 96, reaped about $1 billion from Madoff’s New York firm, which used funds from new investors to pay benefits to established investors, failing to invest any client money from 1980 until December 2008, when Madoff was arrested, The Boston Globe reported Wednesday.

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