SEC Charges 'Mini-Madoff' With Fraud

SEC has slim chance of finding Stanford, missing stash

(NEWSER) - Financier Robert Allen Stanford is now a fugitive and SEC officials don't look any likelier to get their man than his investors do to get their money back, Felix Salmon writes in Portfolio. Regulators have been sniffing around his operations for long enough to ensure he's got a contingency plan already in action, probably involving that missing $8 billion and one of his multiple private jets, Salmon notes. More»

Police searching for fund manager after clients complain of missing millions

(NEWSER) - A Florida hedge fund manager is missing along with hundreds of millions of dollars of his clients' money, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. Art Nadel, 75, was reported missing Wednesday after his wife found a suicide note. Stunned investors have been told that Nadel's funds, thought to have totaled $350 million, are now nearly empty. More»

Judge liquidates confessed fraudster's investment firm

(NEWSER) - The SEC is coming under fire for failing to spot what may be the biggest securities fraud in history, the Washington Post reports. The regulator received repeated warnings from 1999 onwards that Bernard Madoff's investment fund was fishy, but failed to conduct even a routine examination until Madoff blew the whistle on himself last week. Madoff may have avoided scrutiny because he also ran a high-profile, legitimate business, helped create Nasdaq, and advised the SEC on electronic trading. More»

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»

(NEWSER) - Investigators see yesterday's guilty plea of Bernard Madoff's right-hand man as a major breakthrough in their efforts to untangle the elaborate Ponzi scheme, BusinessWeek reports. Frank DiPascali, chief financial officer at Madoff's firm, has promised to cooperate with prosecutors and is expected to name other people involved in the scam and to help trace assets Madoff may have stashed around the world. More»