Posted on 01/27/2009 1:20:04 AM PST by CutePuppy
Bridge financing would be an ideal vehicle for Ponzi Schemes. If all goes well there would be plenty of churn, enough to disguise the Ponzi nature of the scheme. And well-run, most of it could even be “legit”.
Exactly.
Norman Hsu had a “legit” one just like that - combined with money laundering to politicos from “sugar daddy” somewhere overseas. If it were not for his past and criminal record compounded by minor mistakes he could have wound down the “pipeline” scheme at any time after it was no longer needed.
That’s why he didn’t have an “exit strategy” - none was necessary, it was not supposed to go on indefinitely, just long enough to transfer enough for favored campaigns.
True, and it did make me feel so small for even contemplating to post this. So, in trying to bulk up the overall amount, I found the article that mentions several recent schemes, in addition to this minor one (by comparison to Madoff).
Madoffs with $50B compounded over several decades don't come up quite that often. Neither were Enron and WorldCom. Wonder if we'll see the Wall Street 2 or Madoff: The Smartest Guys in the Room, with a cast of explicitly greedy and corrupt Democrats... Naah!
You sir, in a nutshell, have described exactly what built the false derivatives economy on a global basis.
Actually more than two orders of magnitude smaller than Madoff. log10(50e9/400e6)~2.1.
It’s interesting because it shows that Madoff was far from the only one. There are lots of these scamsters out there, the public should be made aware of it. Madoff was just their king.
Think of all the implications of the term---this conman must be a student of Alfred North Whitehead.
"Bridge loan"-----that is one heckofa dead metaphor.
He took it several steps farther----pictures on Agape's website would have investors believe that they funded the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Taipei 101 Tower, and the Tower of Babylon, and the Baghdad Railroad...........
Some people will believe anything.
NADEL'S SECOND STRIKE; FAKE CPA DISCOVERED
By KAJA WHITEHOUSE, NY POST, 1/12/09
The accountant for missing Sarasota, Fla., hedge manager Arthur Nadel was slapped with a cease-and-desist order in 1999 for unlawfully practicing as a certified public accountant...... Michael Zucker, 71, was officially touted as the accountant and CPA of Nadel's hedge-fund firm, Scoop Management, according to documents obtained by The Post.
But Zucker, who's wife Caroline chairs the Sarasota County School Board, hasn't been licensed to work as a Florida CPA since 1989, according to state documents. Ten years after his Florida license expired, Zucker was slapped with a cease-and-desist order for practicing with a null-and-void license, an official with the Florida Board of Accountancy confirmed.
While it's legal to operate as an unlicensed accountant in Florida, promoting oneself as a CPA without an official license is against the law, the official said. Also, Florida requires CPAs to be licensed in the state in order to call themselves CPAs, the official said. Authorities are entering their eighth day in the search for Nadel, who is suspected of swindling Scoop Management investors out of as much as $350 million. Nadel has been on the lam since he left for work early last Wednesday, attracting the attention of the FBI and the SEC.
SNIP---Nadel's partner Neil Moody confirmed that Zucker was the firm's official accountant and CPA. Moody said he thought Zucker was a CPA registered in New York, but public records show Zucker also let his New York CPA license expire, although it's not clear when. Scoop Management fund documents list Zucker's lakeside Sarasota home as his business address, but some neighbors said they had no idea Zucker was running a business out of his home or that he was an accountant. One neighbor said she thought Zucker was retired.
SOURCE http://www.nypost.com/seven/01212009/business/nadels_second_strike_151069.htm
> Some people will believe anything.
And some people are too gullible to be trusted with money. Not even their weekly allowance.
The new spiel is "I have a bridge loan for you... You get the bridge with no money down".
“Bridge Loan” in the popular lexicon also means a short-term loan that a person or company takes out until they can secure permanent financing or can remove an impediment to permanent financing.
I know. In some circles it’s colloquially called loan sharking. Apparently, my feeble attempt of making a pun on the “bridge” word association in this case was less obvious and funny than I thought it might be... Oh well, back to school.
Actually, I thought that the key word for that would be "insurance", of viaticals variety, with the total value of insurance settlements comprising multiples of underlying value (which no sane insurance company would ever underwrite).
Makes me wonder to ever trust anyone in “investment banking”, I mean colluded theft.
Bingo!!! CutePuppy sounds more like a wise old dog.
Sounds like quite a few got ‘O-Zuckerfried’!!
LOL.
For a second there, I thought you were serious.
Thanks for the /s
;-)
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