Victims of Bernard Madoff's $65bn (£47bn) fraud poured vitriol on the disgraced financier today as they outlined the devastation he wreaked on their lives. The judge handling the Madoff case received letters and emails from more than 100 former Madoff clients. Some urged the judge to sentence Madoff to life, at a hearing scheduled for 29 June. Others called him "a thief", "a monster", "a psychopathic, lying egomaniac". Stephanie Halio, 67, said her health was suffering from the stress of having lost all her savings in Madoff's Ponzi scheme. "Please allow justice to be served by not allowing this monster to receive anything but the maximum sentence. If he were to go to jail for a thousand years it would not be enough to compensate for his crimes," Halio wrote.
The judge handling the Madoff case received letters and emails from more than 100 former Madoff clients. Some urged the judge to sentence Madoff to life, at a hearing scheduled for 29 June. Others called him "a thief", "a monster", "a psychopathic, lying egomaniac".
Stephanie Halio, 67, said her health was suffering from the stress of having lost all her savings in Madoff's Ponzi scheme. "Please allow justice to be served by not allowing this monster to receive anything but the maximum sentence. If he were to go to jail for a thousand years it would not be enough to compensate for his crimes," Halio wrote.
Some lessons seem never to be learnt. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I heard somewhere that Madoff's clients knew that he was doing SOMETHING illegal...
...but, one would think, "Why not. He's the ex-freaking head of the Wall Street something and I am lucky to have my money with such a smart guy my cousin Lou tells me, and for once I can worry about other things besides my retirement."
Of course, not me. I was predicting doom and the end of the world as we know it for the entire bubble, thinking that the end of dot com bubble wasn't a large enough shake out by half...So, as proof of being a neutral devil's advocate, I missed everything. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
If you handed over your cash to a broker, and the broker looked at Madoff's record and decided he was a good bet, it wouldn't have been a personal choice.
Not a few people seem to have become involved like this - sometimes with two or more levels of indirection.
A more interesting question is where all the money went. If the fund was worth $65bn, and Madoff was keeping most of the cash, that would have made him one of the richest people in the world.
He can't have lost all of it through personal speculation.
Those on Wall St and the City who were on the receiving end of the wealth capture cycle extracted the real money while everybody else was left looking at screens that depicted a representation of what their money would look like if it were real as well. When the Greenspan bubble burst, it was as if somebody pressed Delete and it all went away. But then again, it was never really there in the first place. keep to the Fen Causeway
