(AFP PHOTO JACQUES DEMARTHON) Liliane Bettencourt joins the list of Mr Madoff's super-wealthy victims
Posted on 12/25/2008 12:19:06 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
L'Oreal heiress joins list of Madoff victims
Rosie Lavan
Liliane Bettencourt, the world’s wealthiest woman and heiress to the L'Oreal empire, entrusted part of her $22.9 billion (£15.5 billion) fortune to Bernard Madoff through the fund manager found dead in New York yesterday.
Ms Bettencourt, the daughter of L’Oreal founder Eugene Schueller, was the first investor in a fund managed by Access International Advisors.
Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, the co-founder and chief executive of Access International, was found dead in his office in New York yesterday.
It appears that he committed suicide.
Mr Villehuchet was said to be "devastated" when news of the $50 billion Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Mr Madoff - the biggest corporate fraud in history - emerged, and he feared clients would turn against him in the courts.
He had been trying for a week to recover at least $1.5 billion in European funds that Access International had invested through Mr Madoff's business, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Access, which had $3 billion under management, raised money mainly from wealthy European investors.
(Excerpt) Read more at business.timesonline.co.uk ...
(AFP PHOTO JACQUES DEMARTHON) Liliane Bettencourt joins the list of Mr Madoff's super-wealthy victims
Ping!
uhmmmm.. I think it’s about time we started prosecuting Madoff for involuntary manslaughter. How many people are gonna off themselves as a result of Madoff scamming them?
Notice the similar historical trends here...with 1929?
The guys who off’ed themselves in 1929...were people who thought they were rich and had tidy upscale houses...and woke up the next day to find themselves with a couple thousand bucks, a house and a job...and the riches were long gone. I think we are watching a complete repeat of the event.
Note....Madoff will not be the last event. I think there are dozens of operations like his...and we will eventually find thousands of millionaires who are not worthy of the title.
“Those who ignore History are doomed to repeat it” the saying goes...
So those more knowlegable in these things may I ask something.... can you tell me where the billions went? Was he paying out enough long enough to cover things or is there a secret off shore fund the family will always have. Where did the billions it go?
Unable to maintain the type of returns he was paying out, apparently he was using new money to pay off old money.
Say I invest a hundred bucks and you promise to pay me $20 a year interest. The legit investments maybe throw off $5 or $7 dollars a year, the remainder comes from new people coming in with cash. Those new people are then paid off by the cash brought in by even newer people.
You can see where it would build very quickly and fall apart even more quickly.
That’s pretty much a definition of a ponzi scheme.
But people got a LOT of money returned to them thru this investment in the first decade or so.
Can you imagine being able to do that, what Madoff did? Be convincing enough to bring people in with falsified documentation, and able to move enough money to the upper tiers to keep the scam alive for this long.
It still doesn’t hold a candle to Social Security though.
Because new people were coming in.
If you’re among the first to come into a ponzi scheme, then there’s a decent chance you’ll make some money. If you’re among the last, then there’s an even better chance you’ll lose money. That’s the nature of the thing.
right....that’s why I assume Ms L’Oreal got a decent chunk of change in the beginning......so did the fabric guy.
Right. They may have seen big returns for years, though probably not totaling their initial investment. So, how much money did they actually lose? Just the initial investment? The amount they would have had through legit investments over the same time period? The amount Madoff claimed they had?
The other thing — and this is gonna be interesting — is that some folks may have borrowed against the money Madoff was holding or claimed to be holding. So, those folks are doubly screwed.
The Heidi Fleiss of the investment world has a book that will fry (perhaps) many of the anti-American, anti-God, anti-liberty, anti-____________ (fill in the blank) powers on the planet.
How many times have we heard "Follow the money" ?
Mr Madoff should immediately surround himself with some Blackwater people.
Very funny movie.
I'd love to know how much money she has given to the Democrats over the years.
Madoff was paying returns of 10% to 12% year after year. I don’t know if he skimmed any of the money, but he was taking big commissions from his clients.
I absolutely agree.
My family and I were in Florida last summer, and I noticed just a plethora the "Gilded Age" in certain communities. The perceived wealth was just amazing. My wife asked "What do all these people do?"
Well, the answer to that is the same answer to the question we had 3 years ago - "How can so many people afford these $1,000,000 McMansions near us? How can families making modest incomes afford $500,000 mortgages?"
It turns out, they couldn't.
Interestingly, I found this from Internet:
http://www.women-can-be-wealthy-too.com/wealthy-women.html
# 3. Liliane Bettencourt is the richest person in France. She lives a luxurious lifestyle, travelling the world aboard luxury cruise ships and staying in 5 star hotels. Her wealth is estimated to be around $17.2 billion. How did she get so wealthy? She was born into wealth. Bettencourt was the only child of Mr. Eugene Schueller, the founder of L’Oreal and she inherited his fortune. Due to controversy surrounding her father’s connections to an extreme facist right-wing group, Bettancourt is secretive about how she uses her money. Other than that, she sponsors a prize for “Life Sciences” which she calls after herself. We do not know how else she enjoys her wealth.
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