Some more really lucky bastards..
Tipster: Cheaters to prey on Bernard Madoff
By Jerry Kronenberg | Friday, June 5, 2009 | bostonherald.com | Business & Markets
Photo by John Wilcox
Harry Markopolos believes Bernard Madoff personally kept less than 1 percent of the $65 billion the Ponzi schemer stole - and will probably lose what remains of his cut to money launderers.
“Whatever (Madoff hid) offshore, I think he’s going to get cheated out of,” Markopolos told a conference yesterday at Boston College, his graduate-school alma mater.
“If I’m his private banker in Panama, (I’m thinking): ‘I know Mr. Madoff isn’t getting out of prison to collect the money, and I know his family denies having anything to do with this scheme, so they’re not going to show up, either. So guess what: It’s my money now.’ I call that ‘cheating the cheater’ - and that’s sort of poetic justice, I think.”
Markopolos, a Whitman resident and financial expert who uncovered the Ponzi scheme while working for a Madoff competitor, tried from 2000 to 2008 to tip off regulators about Madoff’s scheme.
However, federal authorities never listened, and Madoff ultimately turned himself in this past December as his scheme collapsed. The financier pleaded guilty in March to criminal charges and faces up to 150 years in prison when he’s sentenced later this month.
Markopolos estimated that $35 billion to $55 billion of the money Madoff claimed to have stolen never really existed. Rather, the money represented fictional profits that Madoff reported to clients.
Of the $10 billion to $35 billion that Markopolos believes Madoff’s customers really lost, most of the money probably went to the Ponzi scheme’s early investors.
Markopolos believes Madoff kept “way, way less than 1 percent, and I can prove that. . . . You can only live in (one) house at a time, you can only fly on one jet plane at a time and you can only sail on one yacht at a time.”
Markopolos believes Madoff will wind up in a special prison designed as much to keep the crook’s victims out as Madoff in. He’s a guy who can’t afford not to be in prison,” he said.
Article URL: bostonherald.com |
