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Internet pioneer Radia Perlman has argued in favor of centralized infrastructure, while speaking at the International Symposium on Blockchain Advancements in Singapore on Friday. Perlman said that conventional wisdom poses centralised systems as “bad” and decentralized as “good,” however decentralized entities are inherently problematic in multiple ways. “Blockchain as a buzzword started as the technology behind Bitcoin. People made money on Bitcoin and the more hyped it was, the more start-ups leveraged the hype to claim their product has something to do with Blockchain” explained Perlman. “If you hear so much hype, eventually you assume well, it must be incredibly...

The sister of convicted Wall Street Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff and her husband were found dead in what authorities said was an apparent murder-suicide in Florida, The Associated Press reported. The couple, identified as 87-year-old Sondra Wiener and her 90-year-old husband Marvin, were found unresponsive in their home in Boynton Beach on Thursday, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said, according to AP. The sheriff's office said that detectives from the Violent Crimes Division had arrived to the home and that further investigation indicated "it appears to be a murder/suicide." An official cause of death will be determined by a...

Thodex, a crypto platform based in Turkey, said its platform has been “temporarily closed” to address an “abnormal fluctuation in the company accounts.” Local media reports say that Faruk Fatih Ozer, Thodex’s founder, has flown to Albania, taking $2 billion of investors’ funds with him. According to the state-run Anadolu Agency, Turkish authorities have now issued an international warrant seeking Ozer’s arrest. ...In 2019, Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX went bankrupt after its CEO died, resulting in millions of dollars’ worth of digital assets being trapped in a digital wallet.

Ruth Madoff is finally living in style again — sharing a $3.8 million waterfront mansion in Connecticut with a former daughter-in-law’s family, The Post has learned. Just hours after the prison death of her widely reviled husband — infamous fraudster Bernie Madoff — Ruth declined to come to the door at the sprawling, four-bedroom house in the swank Lucas Point section of Old Greenwich.​ SNIP Publicly available records suggest that Ruth, 79, moved into the house in September. Before that, she was living in virtual exile in a rented, 989-square-foot townhouse on the other side of the tracks in Old...

Satiria, DC: — Bernie Madoff, mastermind of the biggest investment fraud in U.S. history, convicted of ripping off tens of thousands of people of as much as $65 billion has died in prison. He was 82. The news came as a shock to the Biden Administration who reportedly just days before had settled on a plan to pardon Madoff to head up the Social Security Administration. With the U.S. deficit swelling over the past six months to $1.7 trillion, and the United States spending nearly $660 billion more than it collected in March alone, the maneuver had been considered vital...

Bernie Madoff, whose $65 billion Ponzi scheme made him one of the world’s most hated criminals and destroyed even his own family, died Wednesday at the secure federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina, where he was serving a 150-year prison sentence, according to prison officials. The Associated Press reported the 82-year-old scam king, who had been suffering from end-stage kidney disease and other chronic ailments, died of natural causes. Madoff would have turned 83 on April 29. His epic stock fraud, which came to light amid the global financial crisis of the late 2000s and remains the biggest in...

New York (AP) -- Bernie Madoff, the financier who pleaded guilty to orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history, died in a federal prison early Wednesday, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. Madoff died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, apparently from natural causes, the person said. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.

Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg twice compared Social Security to a Ponzi scheme when he was in office, CNN reports, which is a far cry from his current stance as a Democratic presidential candidate. Nowadays, Bloomberg has vowed to to strengthen entitlement programs, but he used to see them as a major hurdle in the effort to shrink the United States' deficit. During appearances on his old radio program "Live from City Hall," which were reviewed by CNN's KFile, Bloomberg made the Ponzi scheme comparison once in 2006 and again in 2009. The latter instance was...

Bernie Madoff, the notorious Ponzi schemer, says that he is dying from terminal kidney disease, and on Wednesday asked a judge to grant him an early release from prison on compassionate grounds so that he can live out his remaining days with a friend. A lawyer for Madoff, in a legal filing, says the fraudster has “less than 18 months to live,” and is suffering from “numerous other serious medical conditions” including cardiovascular disease and hypertension. On Thursday, a lawyer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Madoff, filed a court document asking...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, July 31, 2019 Department of Justice Begins Fourth Distribution of Funds Recovered Through Asset Forfeiture to Compensate Victims of Bernard Madoff Fraud Scheme Largest Payment of Forfeited Funds in the History of the Department of Justice’s Victim Compensation Program The Department of Justice today announced that on July 31, the Madoff Victim Fund (MVF) began its fourth distribution of $469.6 million in funds forfeited to the U.S. Government in connection with the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS) fraud scheme, bringing the total distributed to $2.4 billion...

Former CIA Director John Brennan compared President Donald Trump to notorious financial fraudster Bernie Madoff Thursday evening, calling the pair “remarkably unethical.” “You are to governance & politics what Bernie Madoff was to the stock market & investment advice. The two of you share a remarkably unethical ability to deceive & manipulate others, building Ponzi schemes to aggrandize yourselves. Truth & justice ultimately caught up with Bernie,” Brennan tweeted Thursday evening.

MIDTOWN — A prominent financier who lost millions in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme leapt to his death from a Midtown hotel Monday afternoon, according to police sources and reports.

Ponzi king Bernie Madoff is seeking new business ventures behind bars — in the hot chocolate market. Madoff , 78, has bought up all Swiss Miss packets from the commissary at the Butner federal correction complex in North Carolina, and is reselling them for a profit, according to a report. “Bernie really was a successful businessman with quite original insights into the market, and he’s continued applying his business instincts in prison,” journalist Steve Fishman told MarketWatch after interviewing Madoff at length for his new podcast “Ponzi Supernova.” “He made it so that if you wanted any, you had to...

United States District Court for the Southern District of California ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFF/COUNTER DEFENDANT’S SPECIAL MOTION TO STRIKE DEFENDANT/ COUNTERCLAIMANT’S DEFAMATION COUNTERCLAIM; ... Between August 2008 and June 2009, Makaeff attended approximately seven real estate investing and finance seminars, workshops, and classes hosted by Trump University and spent a total of approximately $60,000 on the programs. Although Trump University asserts Makaeff was satisfied with the services Trump University provided to her, noting that Makaeff frequently provided excellent reviews of the programs,Makaeff states the Trump University programs she attended were unsatisfactory. Specifically, Makaeff alleges the programs were shorter than advertised, ,...

Julianna Goldman, Laura Strickler CBS News March 7, 2016 Documents Reveal What Trump Actually Said About His University Republican groups fighting Donald Trump are trying everything to derail the front-runner, including airing ads targeting Trump University. The program sold nearly 7,000 students on learning the billionaire's real estate secrets, but the school began winding down in 2010. More than 150 former students allege it was a fraud. Three lawsuits have been filed, one $40 million case in New York brought by the state's attorney general and two class action suits in California. Trump University began in 2004 with online courses...

Schneiderman: Trump University Fraud 'Pretty Straightforward' by Chris Isidore @CNNMoney March 4, 2016: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said that evidence of the fraud perpetrated by Trump University is "pretty straightforward." "It [was] a bait and switch scheme," he said on CNN's New Day Friday, defending his and other lawsuits against the school. "He did ads saying my hand-picked instructors will teach you my personal secrets. You just copy what I did and get rich." But Schneiderman said evidence in the case makes clear that Trump was not involved in hiring instructors, and that he didn't create the program's...

Like seven million other Americans last week, I watched Madoff, the ABC miniseries chronicling the life and financial crimes of the infamous Bernie Madoff. Madoff, chairman of Madoff Investment Securities from its start-up in 1960 until his arrest on December 11, 2008, operated the largest corporate Ponzi scheme and financial fraud in U.S. history. The film, which starred Richard Dreyfuss and Blythe Danner as Madoff and his wife Ruth, aired for four hours over two evenings. The film had the highest viewership of its time-slot, but earned only modest reviews. After the film, ABC aired Madoff: After the Fall, a...

Despite an issue with his heart, 77-year old Bernard Madoff is “doing as well as can be expected” serving a 150 year sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina, according to Ira Sorkin, the lawyer who represented him when he pleaded guilty to the largest financial crime in American history. “I think he’s had a little bout, little bit of a heart problem,” Sorkin told ABC News. Most troubling to Madoff, according to Sorkin and several inmates who served time with him, is that his wife Ruth stopped visiting him years ago and none of his grandchildren have come...

AMES, Iowa -- Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss - star of Jaws and Mr. Holland's Opus - was on hand, somewhat inexplicably. He quietly nabbed a reserved front-row seat as Cruz made his own entrance...

The last defendant in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme is going to jail three years after he pleaded guilty to helping conceal the massive fraud from regulators. Irwin Lipkin, 77, will spend six months in prison for his role in the scheme that defrauded investors of billions of dollars in investments. Lipkin is the last of 15 people convicted in the scam, in which Madoff promised, and appeared on paper to deliver, unrealistic returns on investments. "The roughly $17.5 billion in principal invested by retirees, charities and other clients over decades was mostly gone — paid out as fake profits...