Judge Okays Bankruptcy for Bernie Madoff

After Ponzi scheme debacle, regulator is back, with bigger fangs

(NEWSER) - Having let the Madoff scandal unfold virtually under its nose, the SEC sounded an alert with the announcement of its lawsuit charging Goldman Sachs with fraud. "The message: The SEC is back on the job," Greg Gordon writes for McClatchy . "The release is very judgmental about the conduct, almost scolding," says a law professor, contrasting the tone with the Bush-era SEC's style. "And those releases get done at the highest level." More»

Dismisses SEC bumblers who didn't know Accounting 101

(NEWSER) - Bernie Madoff slagged the SEC in a jailhouse interview released late yesterday, dismissing a compliance examiner looking into his firm in 2006 as a "blowhard" who "talked tough, but didn't look at anything." He said uncovering his Ponzi scheme would have been a cinch if the guy had done his job and asked for records of trades, the Wall Street Journal reports. "It's very easy if you want. You must do a third-party check. It's an absolute must," Madoff said. "It's accounting 101." More»

Ponzi schemer taped giving associates tips to dodge regulators

(NEWSER) - The most important thing to remember if you want to fool the SEC is to act casual, Bernie Madoff told executives at Fairfield Greenwich Group. “You don't want them to think you're concerned about anything,” the Ponzi scheme mastermind said in a phone call taped in 2005, CNN reports. Most regulators are just looking to get some experience in order to work on Wall Street themselves, Madoff said. “You don't have to be too brilliant with these guys," he summed up. 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»

Young, inexperienced investigators awed, missed signs of Ponzi scheme

(NEWSER) - Bernie Madoff got nervous every time SEC investigators came around, but he shouldn't have: A new book claims the regulators were so green they were awestruck by Madoff—and even asked about job openings and dropped off resumes, the New York Post reports. “They’d send kids. I think it was their first job out of school,” a secretary for the firm tells Andrew Kirtzman in his book, Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff. More»