$50 Billion is a huge sum of money to disappear into the ether. While some of the smaller clients of Madoff may truly be victims of fraud, I’m thinking that some of the bigger elite individuals and banking institutions that gave Madoff their funds, still have their funds, squirreled away offshore somewhere through a myriad paper trail that is going to be very difficult, if not impossible to trace.
The upside for these crooks is that while they still have their dough, they are now seeking to get a bailout for “lost” funds and of course a tax loss for the remainder that is not bailed out.
A firm running the amount of $50 Billion is going to have a huge amount of employees, they are going to have a trading floor the size of a football field, lined with row upon row of traders and their computer trading desks.
Fraud and theft has become so rampant, we’re to believe a single man, in what, his 80’s?, managed all this money himself, oh wait, maybe his wife helped him, right.......
Astude businessmen didn’t just hand their money off to Madoff for 15% return. Billions of these dollars were siphoned off to off-shore accounts.
Tax evasion now gets rewarded. At least for the rich and powerful.