SEC Chief Says His Staff Ignored Madoff Warnings

Steady returns, tiny auditors prompted questions

(NEWSER) - Bernard Madoff's investment operation—found this week to be a massive Ponzi scheme that lost as much as $50 billion—raised plenty of red flags over the last decade, the Wall Street Journal reports. As far back as 1999, Madoff’s steady returns in wide-ranging markets seemed unrealistic to some observers, and at least one tried to blow the whistle. “Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme,” a rival wrote to the SEC that year. More»

FBI arrests Bernard Madoff; SEC on trail

(NEWSER) - The FBI has arrested a giant among Wall Street brokers and charged him with bilking his investors of up to $50 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. Federal agents busted Bernard L. Madoff, a former NASDAQ chaiman, after he admitted to employees that his investment advisory business was a "giant Ponzi scheme." The SEC has begun a companion civil case. More»

(NEWSER) - The SEC's inspector general says the agency had plenty of chances to take down Bernie Madoff and whiffed on every one, Bloomberg reports. In a report released today, H. David Kotz writes that the SEC received "detailed and substantive complaints over the years to warrant a thorough and comprehensive examination” of Madoff. And yet it never performed a "competent investigation or examination." More»

Investigator's questions could have exposed Ponzi scheme in 2004

(NEWSER) - An SEC investigator whose questions could have exposed Bernard Madoff's fraud in 2004 was shifted to an unrelated case after raising the alarm, the Washington Post reports. One of the supervisors who told the staffer to focus instead on a mutual funds investigation later married Madoff's niece, and the relationship is now being probed by the SEC. More»

(NEWSER) - The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s companies said today the disgraced financier appears not to have purchased any securities for his clients for “perhaps as much as 13 years,” Bloomberg reports. It was “cash in and cash out,” Irving Picard said. "It was all just made up," a lawyer working with Picard said, according to the AP. "You got somebody else's money." More»