The article doesn’t mention a <i>really</i> important dynamic here — a LOT of the madoff IOUs were purchased by hedge funds for pennies on the dollar, from Madoff investors who needed liquidity for e.g. retirement and couldn’t wait decades to get their money back. Dunno if there still is, but there was an active and liquid market for Madoff receipts for a while. A fund could tell an individual who was wiped out by Madoff “we’ll pay you $0.20 on the dollar for your claim against Madoff”, and then collect the $0.80+ that’s been recovered over the past 10 years. I don’t have an estimate of what % of the recovered dollars are going to the original investors...but it’s not 100%. A lot of the claims have been traded.
Imagine you invest in a hedge fund, and get some amount of returns back. But then, years later, a lawyer comes and tells you to give him the profits because the fund was illegitimate (without you knowing this) and therefore they don't belong to you.<p>This is exactly what is happening to all these people.<p>Doesn't this feel unfair to anyone else?
Victim here. Note that Picard's efforts only help direct investors, or investors in feeder funds that reached an agreemnt with him.<p>The DoJ separate fund help infirect investors, but after the first refund of 25% of the principal invested, they decided to do not refund customers of feeder funds (or at least of <i>some</i> feeder funds) arguing that we may recover something through Picard.<p>Some of you commented on the follyness of investing in something that sounds too good to be true. At the time, I had diversified my portfolio in 8 funds. Kingate (the Madoff's feeder fund were I invested) had the lowest average return of all the funds. I ran a correlation test of these funds, and they all had an R of 0.7 - 0.95, except for Kingate, it had a correlation of ~0 with all the other funds across the years. I also compared with the major stock indexes, and it was completely uncorrelated. Its volatility was also super low. I plotted the average returns over a 3 month period for as many years as I had data, and it was a straight line at 9.8% annual return.<p>It was my first investment and I thought it was fantastic: uncorrelated, stable, a bit low on the returns side compared to the other funds.<p>Hindsight is 20/20, I guess. I had null previous experience and I just didn't knew how ridiculous these results were, and that this fund had SCAM sprayed all over it.<p>I was advised by "professionals", which turned out to be nothing more than sellers in fancy suits.
Be careful about the "victim" label. Lots of Madoff's clients had very quiet discussions with lawyers.<p>"I had 5 million in invested with Madoff, now it is gone".<p>"No. You gave him 2 million 20 year ago. He told you that had grown to 5 million. He also paid you 2.5 million over those 20 years."<p>"So I only lost the original 2 million?"<p>"No. You were paid that 2 million back, plus an additional 500$ stolen from other people. That 500k was stolen money. You received and spent stolen money. If the FBI or IRS calls SAY NOTHING before talking to me again."
Anyone who wants to see Madoff now sweeping the floors in Federal Correctional Institution Butner Medium there's a photo out there [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://blog.hyip.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Bernie-Scheme-2.2-4.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://blog.hyip.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Bernie-Sche...</a>
So this has some interesting implications: the SEC has started going after the most fraudulent ICOs, and will no doubt start working their way backwards. Cryptocurrencies provide a permanent record of all transactions, and exchanges are obliged by KYC to map that to real people. This means that people who've already profited from crypto bubbles (and maybe even spent the money) might find themselves the target of recovery actions.
On June 29, 2009, Judge Chin sentenced Madoff to the maximum sentence of 150 years in federal prison.<p>I vaguely remember the economic collapse of 2008, partly because at the time I was just getting out of a rough patch in my life and I'd bought a starter home. Granted, it was a mobile home, but it was 50,000 i'd made sure I could pay off at the bank and start building some equity. Then out of nowhere I lost my job, the machine shop I worked at closed, and after about 3 months I was effectively homeless.<p>People like me dont have "hedge fund" investment money. I had to give my dog away because i couldnt afford to feed it and sell my car for a deposit on a studio apartment. I guess Bernies bones will bleach for those hundred some odd years of biblical retribution, but for me I never saw any justice.<p>As far as I can tell, nobody, not one person responsible for crashing the economy and taking everything from me, was arrested or jailed. Im just supposed to imagine that the economy "got better" and everything is OK now. Madoff just seems like 'millionaires getting a few million back' to me.
Is it possible to argue that Bernie Madoff did a lot less direct fiscal harm than many (most?) legitimate investment companies that were unwound at that time?<p>I suggested this at the time and got a lot of flak (from family members).
> His sons, who worked for him, are dead—one hanged himself and the other died of cancer.<p>Well that's fucked. The guy stole 19B, but is now serving a 150 yr prison sentence and his family is dead. Was it worth it?
They way the money is being recovered, seems, from suing the investors whose money did not get stolen, and taking the early profits from them.<p>That also included funds that invested into Madoff's scheme (knowingly or unknowingly that it was illegitimate at the time).<p>"...<p>Picard filed hundreds of lawsuits to “claw back” phony profits from a wide range of customers, including individuals, families and estates that invested with Madoff for years. The trustee also went after offshore “feeder funds” that collected cash from their own customers and funneled it to Madoff to tap his unusually consistent returns.<p>…"<p>is anybody else reading this differently?<p>Because this was a Ponzi scheme, this seems to be the only way to 'make fair' so to speak. Are there other ways?<p>This seems to be unfair to the investors who did not know the scheme was illegitimate. They lost opportunity to invest into somewhere else, it is not like any other investment was unprofitable at the time.
Something that has always puzzled me is why anyone would invest without SIPC insurance? Either they didn't understand what SIPC is or they wanted to avoid some kind of SEC scrutiny.
It shows that the crooks which have participated in Bernie Madoff's scam have been getting richer. It seems that crime pays if you can find someone else to take the fall.