I wonder how much really was lost. I bet Madoff does not know!
JANUARY 5, 2009
Madoff Chasers Dug for Years, to No Avail
Regulators Probed at Least 8 Times Over 16 Years; Congress Starts Review of SEC Today
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111743915052731.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Remove the specifics (names, dollar amounts), and this article could have been written about Social Security, with the scam victims being all of us who are forced to pay into it. SS is the biggest Ponzi scheme in history — but that’s okay, because it’s the gubmint’s Ponzi scheme....
The Securities Investor Protection Corp (receiver of Madoff's now-defunct fund) is examining Madoff's New York Mellon Bank accounts that appear to have sent and received money from offshore locations..........
Signicantly many of the entities invested with Madoff are tax-exempt non profit "charities and foundations"---which the IRS has labled as massive tax evasion schemes.
To pull off a $50 billion scheme, the Madoff cabal would have had to involve investors, relatives, associates, co-conspirators (or subsets of them), businesses and tax-exempt organizations........colluding together with similar goals like tax evasion and money laundering.
Madoff may have escaped scrutiny by routing his scheme through telephone lines with a maze of complex telecommunications' systems equipped with call-forwarding and voice mail systems, and numerous postal and commercial mail boxes..........and perhaps unregulated money-transfer systems that operate below the oversight radar in ethnic enclaves and places like NYC's Diamond District.
The "investment" monies could have been disguised (to evade the IRS) by routing through a network of domestic and international bank accounts using counterfeit checks.....opening commercial bank accounts in the name of bogus businesses and wire-transferring and/or depositing "investment" checks into those accounts.
The checks could have had invalid bank routing numbers, forged endorsements, or been drawn on the proceeds of other counterfeit checks deposited in other bank accounts. Before banks discovered the fraud, the funds might have been transferred out of the accounts……probably offshore----leaving banks unable to recoup their losses.
State and federal tax authorities could have been swindled, if the scheme involved filing hundreds of phony tax returns in real or fictitious names, falsely claiming federal EITC credits (meant to benefit low-income earners).
Madoff might have manufactured falsified “loss statements” as a tax evasion ploy.
In an international scheme with offshore ties, the co-conspirators or subsets of them might have obtained hundreds of taxpayer identification numbers for phantom citizens with worldwide addresses, and used the information, along with phony passports, to claim hundreds of bogus tax refunds.
Investigators poring over Madoff's books have discovered he routinely falsified documents. Using classic fraud techniques, Madoff kept two (or more) sets of books. One set keeps track of losses at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC's (his investment advisory arm), while the other set of books is what investors were shown.
NOTE The SIPC is financed by the securities industry and hands out reimbursements to investors who lost money through LEGIT brokerages. It was not intended to reimburse individuals involved in shady schemes with people like Madoff.
“Madoff ‘s Victims Unlikely To Recover Much Money”
Really? That must be why they call it a scam!