Posted on 10/05/2009 7:50:02 AM PDT by AJKauf
It took a long time for anyone to point out an obvious phenomenon about the $60 billion Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, the largest in history. It was that Madoff victimized thousands upon thousands of his fellow American Jews. By the time that phenomenon was recognized, it was too late for Americans to properly digest the intellectual nutrients it offered. The story was over.
But now it turns out that another Madoff-like Ponzi operation, this one the world’s second largest, also laid financial waste to Jews. This clearly is no one-off phenomenon.
As a story, the Stanford Financial Group of banks and “investment” houses got much shorter shrift than Madoff’s crimes, and so far no one has publicly connected it to a specific demographic of victim. But the Stanford Ponzi, started by former Texas health club owner R. Allen Stanford, hammered the 40,000 Jews of Mexico City to the tune of a half billion dollars, and to a lesser extent hit the smaller Jewish community of Caracas, Venezuela....
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
As the author says, I don’t see this as an anti-Semetic move. These guys are world class criminals and they found a mark.
The mark could have just as easily been the Indian community or Lebanese community.
A mark is a mark. Someone to rob...
Both those guys are the devil...
Uh, maybe those who chose to invest with these scammers might bear part of the blame...................?
So many of these scams seem to target ethnoreligious communities. Its just that the Jews of the United States and Mexico City had more dinero to fleece. You could say that one should always do due dilligence, but even Madoff appeared legit (yeah, I know the closet in Rockland County that was an “office”, but who has the time to inspect every address on a prospectus sheet?).
>>>It took a long time for anyone to point out an obvious phenomenon about the $60 billion Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme,
Untrue. This was a prominent part of the story almost from the beginning.
If there was a reason, it is becuase those may be liberals, not because of ethnic or religion. Liberals should question Obama being so hard on Israel settlements instead.
I had a black family living across the street from me that were fronting as born agains who had found Jesus after years of party life. They talked a good game, had born again slogans vanity license plates, did Sunday church and all the trimmings etc.
Turns out they were con artists working the born again angle in order to bilk people out of money and I know of a few people they took for tens of thousands of dollars.
Madoff worked the religious angle in going after his marks and if there is a lesson to be learned here is that religion and business don’t mix and people shouldn’t fall for the pious act when it comes to their money.
It’s called “affinity fraud.”
Any close-knit group is easy prey.
Sounds like the Democrat party. ;~))
As a NY Met fan, I am hopeful the $700 million the Wilpons lost to Madoff will force those pathetic owners to sell the team to someone that will do what it takes to win.
Stanford didn’t target Jews. He targeted anyone with anyone with no scruples looking to make a fast buck. He hit Moamar Qadaffi and Arabs hard.
Madoff ‘targeted’ Jews because he built his network based on trusted connections. The Jews that were targeted weren’t targeted because they were Jews, but because they were all within a social network that started off with Madoff’s closest circle of business contacts, who were Jewish because Madoff was Jewish.
Indeed. Two phrases come to mind:
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch"
and
"You can't cheat an honest man."
That’s a very bright side. NARAL is in tatters, for instance.
It seems to me that in the case of Madoff it was a liberal Jewish crook taking advantage of his liberal Jewish friends, who were conveniently rich and confided in him.
In fact, it strikes me as somewhat analogous to the powerful leftist Jews surrounding Obama in the White House, who are eagerly helping him destroy Israel, in their case motivated more by twisted ideology than greed, although there’s that, too.
Other groups do it. There are self-hating Jews, there are self-hating Catholics, and there are self-hating Americans, perversely eager to destroy their own, either motivated by greed, or by twisted guilt, or by some perverse leftist ideology.
EXAMPLE:
Slavery reparations scam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The “Slave Reparations Act” (also called the Slavery Reparation Tax Credit, Black Tax Credit or Black Inheritance Tax Refund) is a tax fraud related to the concept of reparations for slavery. The scam claims that filers can receive $5,000 or increased social security payouts for African-Americans born in the United States between 1911 and 1926.
It claims that African-Americans are entitled to a $5,000 slavery reparation tax credit. Below is a sample solicitation:
BORN PRIOR TO THE YEAR OF 1928 AND OF THE BLACK ETHNIC RACE?
DO YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO WAS BORN UP UNTIL 1927? DID YOU KNOW THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS REFUNDING MONIES TO ANYONE ALIVE THAT WAS BORN UP UNTIL THE YEAR OF 1927 DUE TO THE SLAVE REPARATION ACT? FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:
(Scammer’s name and address redacted)
PROVIDE THEM WITH THE FOLLOWING INFO AND AN APPLICATION WILL BE MAILED TO YOU FOR THE ISSUANCE OF A $5000.00 CHECK WHICH CAN BE EITHER ATTACHED TO YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK OR ISSUED IN ONE LUMP SUM:
NAME
ADDRESS
PHONE#
SOCIAL SECURITY
DATE OF BIRTH
The goal of the scam is to get the victim to send all of their information to the scammer. By doing this, the scammer will gain the ability to commit identity theft on the victim.
This scam may have resulted from unpassed congressional legislation in 1999 to explore slave reparations. The bill, H.R. 40, would have created a commission to study the possibility of actual reparations to slave families.
Another payout quotes $43,209 as the estimated value of “40 acres and a mule,” supposedly laid out in an 1866 bill that was passed by Congress but was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. No such bill was entered into Congress in 1866. It is based on an actual order by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, Special Field Order No. 15, that set aside land from Charleston, South Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida for the exclusive use of freed slaves. Each family would receive 40 acres (160,000 m2) from this holding. Sherman may have acted on his own authority. No record exists of President Abraham Lincoln or the War Department authorizing this action.
In response to Sherman, the White House issued Howard’s Circular 15 in September 1865 ordering restoration of land to pardoned owners and taking them back from freed slaves who had received them under Special Field Order No. 15.
The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 did make public land in some states available to freed slaves. Most of this land was swampy or distant from travel routes or was claimed by lumber companies.
In April 2002, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) received more than 100,000 attempts to claim reparation tax credits and paid out more than $30 million in erroneous refunds. The IRS continued to report false tax credit scams and claims in 2003 and 2004.
[edit]
I bet the bulk of these investors knew some kind of scam was going on all along, and they ultimately got burned. LMAO at all of them, frankly.
Affinity fraud. Reminds me of my experience with multi-level marketing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.