simplicity

Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders – NYTimes.com

I have been following this story since it broke a few weeks ago. I am highly interested in how this occurred and why this occurred. It is just quite fascinating to me for some reason. I think I have always been gravitated to stories about how people make their millions, what type of businesses they run, what type of lives they live. That would explain my nauseating love for non-fiction, but at the same time I am also intrigued with their downfall and why that downfall occurs.

This is a long read (~5400 words) and I do not recommend it unless you have the time or do not know of what has been occurring. I was hoping to get a lot more of the ‘how’, ‘where’, and ‘why’ but so is the rest of the world.

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.”

The case is still viewed more with mystery than clarity, and Mr. Madoff’s version of events can only be drawn from statements attributed to him by federal prosecutors and regulators as he has not commented publicly on the case.

But whatever else Mr. Madoff’s game was, it was certainly this: The first worldwide Ponzi scheme – a fraud that lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than any similar scheme in history, entirely eclipsing the puny regional ambitions of Charles Ponzi, the Boston swindler who gave his name to the scheme nearly a century ago.

Source – Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders – NYTimes.com