Madoff Mails $1M in Bling; Feds Pounce

Ponzi schemer a Luddite who crawled on all fours to align rugs

(NEWSER) - "Neat freak" may be one of the more polite epithets used to describe Bernie Madoff, who comes off as an obsessive-compulsive nut in a Fortune profile by James Bandler and Nicholas Varchaver. In immaculately tailored suits, he dusted furniture and got down on hands and knees to straighten rugs. Madoff, now jailed, would startle female employees by dropping trou to ensure his shirt buttons were vertical. More»

Fraudster will wait in jail until June sentencing

(NEWSER) - A federal appeals court today denied Bernard Madoff’s request to be released on bail until his June sentencing date, the New York Daily News reports. “The defendant’s age and exposure to imprisonment are undisputed, and the court did not err in inferring an incentive to flee from these facts,” the three-judge panel said in confirming that the 70-year-old Madoff, facing a 150-year sentence, was a flight risk. More»

Ponzi master to plead guilty today, bail could be revoked

(NEWSER) - Bernie Madoff will head to court today to plead guilty to all 11 charges against him, and there’s every chance he won’t be going home afterward, the New York Times reports. The big question hanging over today’s hearing is whether the court will revoke Madoff’s bail. Once he pleads guilty, Madoff won’t be presumed innocent anymore, and his lawyers will have to make the case that he should go free until sentencing. More»

Former employee warned agency, others of 'Ponzi scheme'

(NEWSER) - A former employee of Sir Allen Stanford warned the SEC in 2003 of an “illegal Ponzi scheme” involving his firms, but regulators brushed off the allegations, the Financial Times reports. The whistleblower also told another regulatory body that one of Stanford’s companies was “engaged in a Ponzi scheme to defraud its clients,” but regulators didn’t come down on the alleged $8 billion fraud until last week. 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»