Madoff investment scandal

The Madoff investment scandal was a major case of stock and securities fraud discovered in late 2008. In December of that year, Bernie Madoff, the former Nasdaq chairman and founder of the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, admitted that the wealth management arm of his business was an elaborate multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

Madoff founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960, and was its chairman until his arrest. The firm employed Madoff's brother Peter as senior managing director and chief compliance officer, Peter's daughter Shana Madoff as rules and compliance officer and attorney, and Madoff's sons Mark and Andrew. Peter was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Mark died by suicide two years to the day after his father's arrest.

Alerted by Madoff's sons, federal authorities arrested Madoff on December 11, 2008. On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal crimes and admitted to operating the largest Ponzi scheme in history. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed, with restitution of $170 billion. He died in prison in 2021.

According to the original federal charges, Madoff said that his firm had "liabilities of approximately US$50 billion." Prosecutors estimated the size of the fraud to be $64.8 billion, based on the amounts in the accounts of Madoff's 4,800 clients as of November 30, 2008. Ignoring opportunity costs and taxes paid on fictitious profits, about half of Madoff's direct investors lost no money. Harry Markopolos, a whistleblower whose repeated warnings about Madoff were ignored, estimated that at least $35 billion of the money Madoff claimed to have stolen never really existed, but was simply fictional profits he reported to his clients.

Investigators determined that others were involved in the scheme. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was criticized for not investigating Madoff more thoroughly; questions about his firm had been raised as early as 1999. The legitimate trading arm of Madoff's business that was run by his two sons was one of the top market makers on Wall Street, and in 2008 was the sixth-largest.

Madoff's personal and business asset freeze created a chain reaction throughout the world's business and philanthropic community, forcing many organizations to at least temporarily close, including the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, the Picower Foundation, and the JEHT Foundation.

Background

Madoff started his firm in 1960 as a penny stock trader with $5,000 , earned from working as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer, and $50,000 that he had borrowed from his in-laws . His fledgling business, which he founded with his high school sweetheart Ruth Alpern, began to grow with the assistance of his father-in-law, accountant Saul Alpern, who referred a circle of friends and their families.
Initially, the firm made markets ( quoted bid and ask prices) via the National Quotation Bureau's Pink Sheets. To compete with firms that were members of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) trading on the stock exchange's floor, his firm began using innovative computer information technology to disseminate quotes. After a trial run, the technology that the firm helped develop became Nasdaq. At one point, Madoff Securities was the largest buying-and-selling "market maker" at the Nasdaq.

He was active in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a self-regulatory securities industry organization, serving as the chairman of the board of directors and on the board of governors.

In 1992, Randall Smith of ''The Wall Street Journal'' described him as:

Several family members worked for him. His younger brother, Peter, was senior managing director and chief compliance officer, and Peter's daughter, Shana Madoff, was the compliance attorney. Madoff's sons, Mark and Andrew, worked in the trading section, along with Charles Weiner, Madoff's nephew. Andrew Madoff invested his own money in his father's fund, but Mark stopped in about 2001.

Federal investigators believe the fraud in the investment management division and advisory division may have begun in the 1970s. However, Madoff himself stated his fraudulent activities began in the 1990s. Madoff's fraudulent activities are believed to have accelerated after the 2001 change from fractional share trades to decimals on the NYSE, which cut significantly into his legitimate profits as a market-maker. With fractional trades Madoff profited up to 12.5 cents per share with each trade handled by his firm, but following decimalization this bid ask spread between sellers and buyers was reduced to as low as one cent.

In the 1980s, Madoff's market-maker division traded up to 5% of the total volume made on the NYSE. Madoff was "the first prominent practitioner" of payment for order flow, paying brokers to execute their clients' orders through his brokerage, a practice some have called a "legal kickback". This practice gave Madoff the distinction of being the largest dealer in NYSE-listed stocks in the U.S., trading about 15% of transaction volume. Academics have questioned the ethics of these payments. Madoff has argued that these payments did not alter the price that the customer received. He viewed payments for order flow as a normal business practice: "If your girlfriend goes to buy stockings at a supermarket, the racks that display those stockings are usually paid for by the company that manufactured the stockings. Order flow is an issue that attracted a lot of attention but is grossly overrated."

By 2000, Madoff Securities, one of the top traders of US securities, held approximately $300 million in assets . The business occupied three floors of the Lipstick Building in Manhattan, with the investment management division on the 17th floor, referred to as the "hedge fund", employing a staff of fewer than 24. Madoff also ran a branch office in London that employed 28 people, separate from Madoff Securities. The company handled investments for his family of approximately £80 million. Two remote cameras installed in the London office permitted Madoff to monitor events from New York.

After 41 years as a sole proprietorship, Madoff converted his firm into a limited liability company in 2001, with himself as the sole shareholder.

Modus operandi

In 1992, Bernard Madoff explained his purported strategy to ''The Wall Street Journal''. He said his returns were really nothing special, given that the Standard & Poors 500-stock index generated an average annual return of 16.3% between November 1982 and November 1992. "I would be surprised if anybody thought that matching the S&P over 10 years was anything outstanding." The majority of money managers actually trailed the S&P 500 during the 1980s. The ''Journal'' concluded Madoff's use of futures and options helped cushion the returns against the market's ups and downs. Madoff said he made up for the cost of the hedges, which could have caused him to trail the stock market's returns, with stock-picking and market timing.

Purported strategy

Madoff's sales pitch was an investment strategy consisting of purchasing blue-chip stocks and taking options contracts on them, sometimes called a split-strike conversion or a collar. "Typically, a position will consist of the ownership of 30–35 S&P 100 stocks, most correlated to that index, the sale of out-of-the-money ' calls' on the index and the purchase of out-of-the-money ' puts' on the index. The sale of the 'calls' is designed to increase the rate of return, while allowing upward movement of the stock portfolio to the strike price of the 'calls'. The 'puts', funded in large part by the sales of the 'calls', limit the portfolio's downside."

In his 1992 "Avellino and Bienes" interview with ''The Wall Street Journal'', Madoff discussed his supposed methods: In the 1970s, he had placed invested funds in "convertible arbitrage positions in large-cap stocks, with promised investment returns of 18% to 20%", and in 1982, he began using futures contracts on the stock index, and then placed put options on futures during the 1987 stock market crash. A few analysts performing due diligence had been unable to replicate the Madoff fund's past returns using historic price data for U.S. stocks and options on the indexes. ''Barron's'' raised the possibility that Madoff's returns were most likely due to front running his firm's brokerage clients.

Mitchell Zuckoff, professor of journalism at Boston University and author of ''Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend,'' says that "the 5% payout rule", a federal law requiring private foundations to pay out 5% of their funds each year, allowed Madoff's Ponzi scheme to go undetected for a long period since he managed money mainly for charities. Zuckoff notes, "For every $1 billion in foundation investment, Madoff was effectively on the hook for about $50 million in withdrawals a year. If he was not making real investments, at that rate the principal would last 20 years. By targeting charities, Madoff could avoid the threat of sudden or unexpected withdrawals.

In his guilty plea, Madoff admitted that he had not actually traded since the early 1990s, and all of his returns since then had been fabricated. However, David Sheehan, principal investigator for trustee Irving Picard, believes the wealth management arm of Madoff's business had been a fraud from the start.

Madoff's operation differed from a typical Ponzi scheme. While most Ponzi schemes are based on nonexistent businesses, Madoff's brokerage operation arm was very real. At the time of its shuttering, it handled large trades for institutional investors.

Sales methods

Madoff was a "master marketer" who, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, built a reputation as a wealth manager for a highly exclusive clientele. Investors who gained access, typically on word-of-mouth referral, believed that they had entered the inner circle of a money-making genius, and some were wary of removing their money from his fund, in case they could not get back in. In later years, even as Madoff's operation accepted money from various countries through feeder funds, he continued to package it as an exclusive opportunity. People who met him in person were impressed with his apparent humility despite his reported financial success and personal wealth.

A scheme that targets members of a particular religious or ethnic community is a type of affinity fraud, and a ''Newsweek'' article identified Madoff's scheme as "an affinity Ponzi". The ''New York Post'' reported that Madoff "worked the so-called 'Jewish circuit' of well-heeled Jews he met at country clubs on Long Island and in Palm Beach." The scandal so affected Palm Beach that, according to ''The Globe and Mail'', residents "stopped talking about the local destruction the Madoff storm caused only when Hurricane Trump came along" in 2016. ''The New York Times'' reported that Madoff courted many prominent Jewish executives and organizations and, according to the Associated Press, they "trusted adoffbecause he is Jewish." One of the most prominent promoters was J. Ezra Merkin, whose fund Ascot Partners steered $1.8 billion towards Madoff's firm.

Most Ponzi schemes appeal to greed, but Madoff appealed to investors' fear of volatility. His "unusually consistent" annual returns of around 10% were a key factor in perpetuating the fraud. Ponzi schemes typically pay returns of 20% or higher and collapse quickly. One Madoff fund, which described its "strategy" as focusing on shares in the Standard & Poor's 100-stock index, reported a 10.5% annual return during the previous 17 years. Even at the end of November 2008, amid a general market collapse, the same fund reported that it was up 5.6%, while the same year-to-date total return on the S&P 500-stock index had been negative 38%. Diana Henriques of the ''Times'' said that Madoff's victims could have made much more money in other investments

An unnamed investor remarked, "The returns were just amazing, and we trusted this guy for decades — if you wanted to take money out, you always got your check in a few days. That's why we were all so stunned."

The Swiss bank Union Bancaire Privée explained that because of Madoff's huge volume as a broker-dealer, the bank believed he had a perceived edge on the market because his trades were timed well, suggesting they believed he was front running.

Access to Washington

The Madoff family gained unusual access to Washington's lawmakers and regulators through the industry's top trade group. The Madoff family maintained long-standing, high-level ties to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the primary securities industry organization.

Bernard Madoff sat on the board of directors of the Securities Industry Association, which merged with the Bond Market Association in 2006 to form SIFMA. Madoff's brother Peter subsequently spent two terms on SIFMA's board. From 2000 to 2008, the brothers donated $56,000 to SIFMA, and also spent tens of thousands to sponsor SIFMA industry meetings. Peter resigned from the board in December 2008 as the Madoff scandal began to come to light and scrutiny of the brothers' relationship with SIFMA and regulators increased.

In addition, Bernard Madoff's niece Shana Madoff who was the compliance officer and attorney at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities from 1995 until 2008, was active on the Executive Committee of SIFMA's Compliance & Legal Division, but resigned her SIFMA position shortly after her uncle's arrest. She in 2007 married former assistant director of the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations Eric Swanson, whom she had met in April 2003 while he was investigating her uncle Bernie Madoff and his firm. The two had periodic contact thereafter in connection with Swanson speaking at industry events organized by a SIFMA committee on which Shana Madoff sat. During 2003, Swanson sent Shana's father Peter Madoff two regulatory requests. In March 2004, SEC lawyer Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, who was reviewing Madoff's firm, raised questions to Swanson (Walker-Lightfoot's boss's supervisor) about unusual trading at a Bernie Madoff fund; Walker-Lightfoot was told to instead concentrate on an unrelated matter. Swanson and Walker-Lightfoot's boss asked for her research, but did not act upon it. In February 2006, Swanson was emailed by Assistant Director John Nee that the SEC's New York Regional Office was investigating a complaint that Bernard Madoff might be running "the biggest Ponzi scheme ever."

In April 2006, Swanson began to date Shana Madoff. Swanson reported the relationship to his supervisor who wrote in an email "I guess we won't be investigating Madoff anytime soon." On 15 September 2006, Swanson left the SEC. On December 8, 2006, Swanson and Shana Madoff became engaged. In 2007, the two married. A spokesman for Swanson said he "did not participate in any inquiry of Bernard Madoff Securities or its affiliates while involved in a relationship" with Shana Madoff.

Previous investigations

Madoff Securities LLC was investigated at least eight times over a 16-year period by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulatory authorities.

Avellino and Bienes

In 1992, the SEC investigated one of Madoff's feeder funds, Avellino & Bienes, the principals being Frank Avellino, Michael Bienes, and his wife Dianne Bienes. Bienes began his career working as an accountant for Madoff's father-in-law, Saul Alpern. Then, he became a partner in the accounting firm Alpern, Avellino and Bienes. In 1962, the firm began advising its clients about investing all of their money with a mystery man, a highly successful and controversial figure on Wall Street—but until this episode, not known as an ace money manager—Madoff. When Alpern retired at the end of 1974, the firm became Avellino and Bienes and continued to invest solely with Madoff.

Avellino & Bienes, represented by Ira Sorkin, Madoff's former attorney, were accused of selling unregistered securities. In a report to the SEC they mentioned the fund's "curiously steady" yearly returns to investors of 13.5% to 20%. However, the SEC did not look any more deeply into the matter, and never publicly referred to Madoff. Through Sorkin, who once oversaw the SEC's New York office, Avellino & Bienes agreed to return the money to investors, shut down their firm, undergo an audit, and pay a fine of $350,000. Avellino complained to the presiding federal judge, John E. Sprizzo, that Price Waterhouse fees were excessive, but the judge ordered him to pay the bill of $428,679 in full. Madoff said that he did not realize the feeder fund was operating illegally, and that his own investment returns tracked the previous 10 years of the S&P 500. The SEC investigation came right in the middle of Madoff's three terms as the chairman of the Nasdaq stock market board.

The size of the pools mushroomed by word-of-mouth, and investors grew to 3,200 in nine accounts with Madoff. Regulators feared it all might be just a huge scam. "We went into this thinking it could be a major catastrophe. They took in nearly a half a billion dollars in investor money, totally outside the system that we can monitor and regulate. That's pretty frightening," said Richard Walker, who at the time was the SEC's New York regional administrator.

Avellino and Bienes deposited $454 million of investors' money with Madoff, and until 2007, Bienes continued to invest several million dollars of his own money with Madoff. In a 2009 interview after the scam had been exposed, he said, "Doubt Bernie Madoff? Doubt Bernie? No. You doubt God. You can doubt God, but you don't doubt Bernie. He had that aura about him."

SEC

The SEC investigated Madoff in 1999 and 2000 about concerns that the firm was hiding its customers' orders from other traders, for which Madoff then took corrective measures. In 2001, an SEC official met with Harry Markopolos at their Boston regional office and reviewed his allegations of Madoff's fraudulent practices. The SEC said it conducted two other inquiries into Madoff in the last several years, but did not find any violations or major issues of concern.

In 2004, after published articles appeared accusing the firm of front running, the SEC's Washington office cleared Madoff. The SEC detailed that inspectors had examined Madoff's brokerage operation in 2005, checking for three kinds of violations: the strategy he used for customer accounts; the requirement of brokers to obtain the best possible price for customer orders; and operating as an unregistered investment adviser. Madoff was registered as a broker-dealer, but doing business as an asset manager. "The staff found no evidence of fraud". In September 2005 Madoff agreed to register his business, but the SEC kept its findings confidential. During the 2005 investigation, Meaghan Cheung, a branch head of the SEC's New York's Enforcement Division, was the person responsible for the oversight and blunder, according to Markopolos, who testified on February 4, 2009, at a hearing held by a House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets.

In 2007, SEC enforcement completed an investigation they had begun on January 6, 2006, into a Ponzi scheme allegation. This investigation resulted in neither a finding of fraud, nor a referral to the SEC Commissioners for legal action.

FINRA

In 2007, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the industry-run watchdog for brokerage firms, reported without explanation that parts of Madoff's firm had no customers. "At this point in time we are uncertain of the basis for FINRA's conclusion in this regard," SEC staff wrote shortly after Madoff was arrested.

As a result, the chairman of the SEC, Christopher Cox, stated that an investigation would delve into "all staff contact and relationships with the Madoff family and firm, and their impact, if any, on decisions by staff regarding the firm". A former SEC compliance officer, Eric Swanson, had married Madoff's niece Shana, the Madoff firm compliance attorney.

Other warnings

Outside analysts raised concerns about Madoff's firm for years. Mathematician Edward O. Thorp noted irregularities in 1991. Among other problems, Thorp found evidence Madoff was lying about or exaggerating his activities. While Madoff claimed to have purchased 123 call options for Procter & Gamble stock on April 16, 1991, Thorp later stated "only 20 P&G options in total had changed hands that day."

Rob Picard of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), seeking low-volatility investments, was referred to Madoff in 1997 by employees of Tremont Group who were one of Madoff's key "feeder funds". When pressed for details of his investing strategy, Madoff "stuttered" and became evasive. Picard later stated: "right away I realized he either didn't understand it or he wasn't doing what he said he was doing."Erin Arvenlund (2010). Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff. Portfolio, ISBN 1591842999 Suspecting fraud, RBC declined to invest with Madoff and also cut off professional contact with Tremont.

The next major concern about Madoff's operation was raised in May 2000, when Harry Markopolos, a financial analyst and portfolio manager at Boston options trader Rampart Investment Management, alerted the SEC about his suspicions. A year earlier, Rampart had learned that Access International Advisors, one of its trading partners, had significant investments with Madoff. Markopolos' bosses at Rampart asked him to design a product that could replicate Madoff's returns. However, Markopolos concluded that Madoff's numbers didn't add up. After four hours of trying and failing to replicate Madoff's returns, Markopolos concluded Madoff was a fraud. He told the SEC that based on his analysis of Madoff's returns, it was mathematically impossible for Madoff to deliver them using the strategies he claimed to use. In his view, there were only two ways to explain the figures—either Madoff was front running his order flow, or his wealth management business was a massive Ponzi scheme. This submission, along with three others, passed with no substantive action from the SEC. At the time of Markopolos' initial submission, Madoff managed assets from between $3 billion and $6 billion, which would have made his wealth management business the largest hedge fund in the world even then. The culmination of Markopolos' analysis was his third submission, a detailed 17-page memo entitled ''The World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud.'' He had also approached ''The Wall Street Journal'' about the existence of the Ponzi scheme in 2005, but its editors decided not to pursue the story. The memo specified 30 "red flags" based on a little over 14 years of Madoff trades. The biggest red flag was that Madoff reported only seven losing months during this time, and those losses were statistically insignificant. This result produced a return stream that rose steadily upward with almost no downticks, represented graphically by a nearly-perfect 45-degree angle. Markopolos argued that anyone who knows the math of the markets would know that such a distribution "simply doesn't exist in finance," since the markets were far too volatile even under the best of conditions for this to be possible. Later, Markopolos testified before Congress that this would be like a baseball player batting .966 for the season, compared to .300 to .400 for elite players, "and no one suspecting a cheat". In part, the memo concluded: "Bernie Madoff is running the world's largest unregistered hedge fund. He's organized this business as a 'hedge fund of funds' privately labeling their own hedge funds which Bernie Madoff secretly runs for them using a split-strike conversion strategy getting paid only trading commissions which are not disclosed. If this is not a regulatory dodge, I do not know what is." Markopolos declared that Madoff's "unsophisticated portfolio management" was either a Ponzi scheme or front running (buying stock for his own account based on knowledge of his clients' orders), and concluded it was most likely a Ponzi scheme. Markopolos later testified to Congress that to deliver 12% annual returns to the investor, Madoff needed to earn an extraordinary 16% gross on a regular basis, so as to distribute a 4% fee to the feeder fund managers, whom Madoff needed to secure new victims, which encouraged the feeder funds to be "willfully blind, and not get too intrusive". Though Markopolos's findings were neglected by regulators he did persuade some professional investors. Joel Tillinghast, a mutual fund manager at Fidelity Investments, had been intrigued by anecdotes of Madoff's steady gains. But after a 2000 meeting with Markopolos he became convinced "nothing in Madoff's ostensible strategy made sense."

In 2001, financial journalist Erin Arvedlund wrote an article for ''Barron's'' entitled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", questioning Madoff's secrecy and wondering how he obtained such consistent returns. She reported that "Madoff's investors rave about his performance – even though they don't understand how he does it. 'Even knowledgeable people can't really tell you what he's doing,' one very satisfied investor told ''Barron's''." The ''Barron's'' article and one in '' MARHedge'' by Michael Ocrant suggested Madoff was front-running to achieve his gains. In 2001 Ocrant, editor-in-chief of ''MARHedge'', wrote he interviewed traders who were incredulous that Madoff had 72 consecutive gaining months, an unlikely possibility. Hedge funds investing with him were not permitted to name him as money manager in their marketing prospectus. When high-volume investors who were considering participation wanted to review Madoff's records for purposes of due diligence, he refused, convincing them of his desire to keep his proprietary strategies confidential.

By purportedly selling its holdings for cash at the end of each period, Madoff avoided filing disclosures of its holdings with the SEC, an unusual tactic. Madoff rejected any call for an outside audit "for reasons of secrecy", claiming that was the exclusive responsibility of his brother, Peter, the company's chief compliance officer.

Concerns were also raised that Madoff's auditor of record was Friehling & Horowitz, a two-person accounting firm based in suburban Rockland County that had only one active accountant, David G. Friehling, a close Madoff family friend. Friehling was also an investor in Madoff's fund, which was seen as a blatant conflict of interest. In 2007, hedge fund consultant Aksia advised its clients not to invest with Madoff, saying it was inconceivable that a tiny firm could adequately service such a massive operation.

Typically, hedge funds hold their portfolio at a securities firm (a major bank or brokerage), which acts as the fund's prime broker. This arrangement allows outside investigators to verify the holdings. Madoff's firm was its own broker-dealer, and purported to process all of its trades.

Ironically, Madoff, a pioneer in electronic trading, refused to provide his clients online access to their accounts. He sent out account statements by mail, unlike most hedge funds, which email statements.

Madoff also operated as a broker-dealer, running an asset management division. In 2003, Joe Aaron, a hedge-fund professional, believed the structure suspicious and warned a colleague to avoid investing in the fund, "Why would a good businessman work his magic for pennies on the dollar?" he concluded. Also in 2003, Renaissance Technologies, "arguably the most successful hedge fund in the world", reduced its exposure to Madoff's fund first by 50 percent and eventually completely because of suspicions about the consistency of returns, the fact that Madoff charged very little compared to other hedge funds, and the impossibility of the strategy Madoff claimed to use because options volume had no relation to the amount of money Madoff was said to administer. The options volume implied that Madoff's fund had $750 million, while he was believed to be managing $15 billion. And only if Madoff was assumed to be responsible for all the options traded in the most liquid strike price.

Charles J. Gradante, co-founder of hedge-fund research firm Hennessee Group, observed that Madoff "only had five down months since 1996", and commented on Madoff's investment performance: "You can't go 10 or 15 years with only three or four down months. It's just impossible."

Although Madoff's wealth management business ultimately grew into a multibillion-dollar operation, none of the major derivatives firms traded with him because they did not believe his numbers were real. None of the major Wall Street firms invested with him, and several high-ranking executives at those firms suspected his operations and claims were not legitimate. For example, hedge-fund manager Suzanne Murphy revealed that she balked at investing with Madoff because she did not believe there was enough volume to support his purported trading activity.

Clients such as Fairfield Greenwich Group and Union Bancaire Privée said that they had been given an "unusual degree of access" to evaluate and analyze Madoff's funds, and found nothing unusual with his investment portfolio.

The Central Bank of Ireland failed to spot Madoff's gigantic fraud when he started using Irish funds, and had to supply large amounts of information that should have been enough to enable the Irish regulator to uncover the fraud much earlier than late 2008 when he was finally arrested in New York City.

Final weeks and collapse

The scheme began to unravel in the fall of 2008, when the 2008 financial crisis accelerated. Madoff had previously come close to collapse in the second half of 2005 after Bayou Group, a group of hedge funds, was exposed as a Ponzi scheme that used a bogus accounting firm to misrepresent its performance. By November, investors had requested $105 million in redemptions, though Madoff's Chase account had only $13 million. Madoff survived by moving money from his broker-dealer's account into his Ponzi scheme account. Eventually, he drew on $342 million from his broker-dealer's credit lines to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat through 2006. Markopolos wrote that he suspected Madoff was on the brink of insolvency as early as June 2005, when his team learned he was seeking loans from banks. By then, at least two major banks were no longer willing to lend money to their customers to invest it with Madoff.

In June 2008, Markopolos' team uncovered evidence that Madoff was accepting leveraged money, investing with borrowed funds in an attempt to boost growth. To Markopolos' mind, Madoff was running out of cash and needed to increase his promised returns to keep the scheme going. As it turned out, redemption requests from skittish investors ramped up in the wake of the collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008. The trickle became a flood when Lehman Brothers was forced into bankruptcy in September, coinciding with the near-collapse of American International Group.

Because investors had high confidence in Madoff and viewed their accounts as liquid assets, they withdrew from Madoff first when needing funds to repay their own investors' redemptions. As the market's decline accelerated, investors tried to withdraw $7 billion from the firm. Unknown to them, however, Madoff had simply deposited his clients' money into his business account at Chase Manhattan Bank, and paid customers out of that account when they requested withdrawals. To pay off those investors, Madoff needed new money from other investors. However, in November, the balance in the account dropped to dangerously low levels. Only $300 million in new money had come in, but customers had withdrawn $320 million. He had barely enough in the account to meet his redemption payroll on November 19. Even with a rush of new investors who believed Madoff was one of the few funds that was still doing well, it still was not enough to keep up with the avalanche of withdrawals.

In the weeks prior to his arrest, Madoff struggled to keep the scheme afloat. In November 2008, Madoff Securities International (MSIL) in London made two fund transfers to Bernard Madoff Investment Securities of approximately $164 million. MSIL had neither customers nor clients, and there is no evidence that it conducted any trades on behalf of third parties.

Madoff received $250 million around December 1, 2008, from Carl J. Shapiro, a 95-year-old Boston philanthropist and entrepreneur who was one of Madoff's oldest friends and biggest financial backers. On December 5, he accepted $10 million from Martin Rosenman, president of Rosenman Family LLC, who later sought to recover the never-invested $10 million, deposited in a Madoff account at JPMorgan, wired six days before Madoff's arrest. Judge Lifland ruled that Rosenman was "indistinguishable" from any other Madoff client, so there was no basis for giving him special treatment to recover funds. The judge separately declined to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Hadleigh Holdings, which claimed it entrusted $1 million to the Madoff firm three days before his arrest.

Madoff asked others for money in the final weeks before his arrest, including Wall Street financier Kenneth Langone, whose office was sent a 19-page pitch book, purportedly created by the staff at the Fairfield Greenwich Group. Madoff said he was raising money for a new investment vehicle, between $500 million and $1 billion for exclusive clients, was moving quickly on the venture, and wanted an answer by the following week. Langone declined. In November, Fairfield announced the creation of a new feeder fund. However, it was far too little and far too late.

By the week after Thanksgiving 2008, Madoff knew he was at the end of his tether. The Chase account, which at one point in 2008 had well over $5 billion, was down to only $234 million. With overall bank lending nearly at a standstill, Madoff knew he could not even begin to borrow enough money to meet the outstanding redemption requests. On December 4, he told Frank DiPascali, who oversaw the Ponzi scheme's operation, that he was finished. He directed DiPascali to use the remaining balance in the Chase account to cash out the accounts of relatives and favored investors. On December 9, he told his brother Peter that he was on the brink of collapse.

The following morning, December 10, he suggested to his sons, Mark and Andrew, that the firm pay out over $170 million in bonuses two months ahead of schedule, from $200 million in assets that the firm still had. According to the complaint, Mark and Andrew, reportedly unaware of the firm's pending insolvency, confronted their father, asking him how the firm could pay bonuses to employees if it could not pay investors. At that point, Madoff asked his sons to follow him to his apartment, where he admitted that he was "finished" and that the asset management arm of the firm was in fact a Ponzi scheme – as he put it, "one big lie." Mark and Andrew then reported him to the authorities.

Madoff intended to take a week to wind up the firm's operations before his sons alerted authorities. Instead, Mark and Andrew immediately called lawyers. When the sons revealed their father's plan to use the remaining money to pay relatives and favored investors, their lawyers put them in touch with federal prosecutors and the SEC. Madoff was arrested the following morning.

Investigation into co-conspirators

Investigators looked for others involved in the scheme, despite Madoff's assertion that he alone was responsible for the large-scale operation. Harry Susman, an attorney representing several clients of the firm, stated that "someone had to create the appearance that there were returns", and further suggested that there must have been a team buying and selling stocks, forging books, and filing reports. James Ratley, president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners said, "In order for him to have done this by himself, he would have had to have been at work night and day, no vacation and no time off. He would have had to nurture the Ponzi scheme daily. What happened when he was gone? Who handled it when somebody called in while he was on vacation and said, 'I need access to my money'?"

"Simply from an administrative perspective, the act of putting together the various account statements, which did show trading activity, has to involve a number of people. You would need office and support personnel, people who actually knew what the market prices were for the securities that were being traded. You would need accountants so that the internal documents reconcile with the documents being sent to customers at least on a superficial basis," said Tom Dewey, a securities lawyer.

Arvenlund wrote there was widespread suspicion of confederates to the fraud within Madoff's inner circle, but the secretive nature of the scheme made investigation difficult.

Alleged co-conspirators

* Jeffry Picower and his wife, Barbara, of Palm Beach, Florida, and Manhattan, had two dozen accounts. He was a lawyer, accountant, and investor who led buyouts of health-care and technology companies. Picower's foundation stated its investment portfolio with Madoff was valued at nearly $1 billion at one time. In June 2009, Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Madoff's assets, filed a lawsuit against Picower in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan), seeking the return of $7.2 billion in profits, alleging that Picower and his wife Barbara knew or should have known that their rates of return were "implausibly high", with some accounts showing annual returns ranging from 120% to more than 550% from 1996 through 1998, and 950% in 1999. On October 25, 2009, Picower, 67, was found dead of a massive heart attack at the bottom of his Palm Beach swimming pool. On December 17, 2010, it was announced that a settlement of $7.2 billion had been reached between Irving Picard and Barbara Picower, Picower's widow, the executor of the Picower estate to resolve the Madoff trustee suit, and repay losses in the Madoff fraud. It was the largest single forfeiture in American judicial history. "Barbara Picower has done the right thing," US Attorney Preet Bharara said.
* Stanley Chais, of the Brighton Company: On May 1, 2009, Picard filed a lawsuit against Stanley Chais. The complaint alleged he "knew or should have known" he was involved in a Ponzi scheme when his family investments with Madoff averaged a 40% return. It also claimed Chais was a primary beneficiary of the scheme for at least 30 years, allowing his family to withdraw more than $1 billion from their accounts since 1995. The SEC filed a similar civil suit mirroring these claims. On September 22, 2009, Chais was sued by California Attorney General Jerry Brown who was seeking $25 million in penalties as well as restitution for victims, saying the Beverly Hills investment manager was a 'middleman' in Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Chais died in September 2010. The widow, children, family, and estate of Chais settled with Picard in 2016 for $277 million. Picard's lawyers said the settlement covered all of Chais' estate, and substantially all of his widow's assets.
* Fairfield Greenwich Group, based in Greenwich, Connecticut, had a "Fairfield Sentry" fund—one of many feeder funds that gave investors portals to Madoff. On April 1, 2009, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts filed a civil action charging Fairfield Greenwich with fraud and breaching its fiduciary duty to clients by failing to provide promised due diligence on its investments. The complaint sought a fine and restitution to Massachusetts investors for losses and disgorgement of performance fees paid to Fairfield by those investors. It alleged that, in 2005, Madoff coached Fairfield staff about ways to answer questions from SEC attorneys who were looking into Markopolos' complaint about Madoff's operations. The fund settled with the Commonwealth in September 2009 for $8 million. On May 18, 2009, the hedge fund was sued by trustee Irving Picard, seeking a return of $3.2 billion during the period from 2002 to Madoff's arrest in December 2008. However, the money may already be in the hands of Fairfield's own clients, who are likely off-limits to Picard, since they weren't direct investors with Madoff. In May 2011 the liquidator for the funds settled with Picard for $1 billion.
* Peter Madoff, chief compliance officer, worked with his brother Bernie for more than 40 years, and ran the daily operations for 20 years. He helped create the computerized trading system. He agreed to pay more than $90 million that he does not have to settle claims that he participated in the Ponzi scheme, but Irving Picard agreed to forbear from seeking to enforce the consent judgment as long as Peter Madoff "makes reasonable efforts to cooperate with the Trustee in the Trustee's efforts to recover funds for the BLMIS Estate, including providing truthful information to the Trustee upon request." He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
* Ruth Madoff, Bernard's wife, agreed as part of his sentencing to keep from the federal government only $2.5 million of her claim of more than $80 million in assets, and to give up all of her possessions. The $2.5 million was not however protected from civil legal actions against her pursued by a court-appointed trustee liquidating Madoff's assets, or from investor lawsuits. On July 29, 2009, she was sued by trustee Irving Picard who sought to recover from her $45 million in Madoff funds that were being used to support her "life of splendor" on the gains from the fraud committed by her husband. On November 25, 2008, she had withdrawn $5.5 million, and $10 million on December 10, 2008, from her brokerage account at Cohmad, a feeder fund that had an office in Madoff's headquarters and was part-owned by him. In November she also received $2 million from her husband's London office. She has been seen riding the N.Y.C. subway, and did not attend her husband's sentencing. In May 2019, 77-year-old Ruth Madoff agreed to pay $594,000 ($250,000 in cash, and $344,000 of trusts for two of her grandchildren), and to surrender her remaining assets when she dies, to settle claims by Irving Picard. She is required to provide reports to Picard about her expenditures often, as to any purchase over $100, to ensure she does not have any hidden bank accounts. The case is ''Picard v. Madoff'', 1:09-ap-1391, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
* Madoff's sons, Mark and Andrew Madoff, worked in the legitimate trading arm in the New York office, but also raised money marketing the Madoff funds. Their assets were frozen on March 31, 2009. The two became estranged from their father and mother in the wake of the fraud, which some contended was a charade to protect their assets from litigation. On October 2, 2009, a civil lawsuit was filed against them by trustee Irving Picard for a judgment in the aggregate amount of at least $198,743,299. Peter Madoff and daughter Shana were also defendants. On December 11, 2010, the second anniversary of Madoff's arrest, Mark Madoff was found having committed suicide and hanging from a ceiling pipe in the living room of his SoHo loft apartment. Andrew Madoff died September 3, 2014, from cancer. He was 48, and had reconciled with his mother prior to his death. Told that his father wanted to speak with him and explain what he had done, Andrew told Matt Lauer of the ''Today Show'' he wasn't interested. In June 2017 Irving Picard settled with the sons' estates for more than $23 million, stripping the estates of Andrew and Mark Madoff of "all assets, cash, and other proceeds" of their father's fraud, leaving them with a respective $2 million and $1.75 million.
* Tremont Group Holdings started its first Madoff-only fund in 1997. That group managed several funds marketed under the Re Select Broad Market Fund. In July 2011, Tremont Group Holdings settled with Irving Picard for more than $1 billion.
* The Maxam Fund invested through Tremont. Sandra L. Manzke, founder of Maxam Capital, had her assets temporarily frozen by the same Connecticut court. In August 2013, Irving Picard reached a $98 million settlement with Maxam Absolute Return Fund.
* Cohmad Securities Corp., of which Madoff owned a 10–20% stake: The brokerage firm listed its address as Madoff's firm's address in New York City. Its chairman, Maurice J. "Sonny" Cohn, his daughter and COO Marcia Beth Cohn, and Robert M. Jaffe, a broker at the firm, were accused by the SEC of four counts of civil fraud, "knowingly or recklessly disregarding facts indicating that Madoff was operating a fraud," and they settled that suit with the SEC in 2010. Another lawsuit filed by bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard sought funds for Madoff victims. In November 2016, Picard announced that the estate of "Sonny" Cohn, his widow Marilyn Cohn, and their daughter had agreed to settle with Picard for $32.1 million.
* Madoff Securities International Ltd. in London; individual and entities related to it were sued by Irving Picard and Stephen J. Akers, a joint liquidator of Madoff's London operation, in the United Kingdom's High Court of Justice Commercial Court.
* J. Ezra Merkin, a prominent investment advisor and philanthropist, was sued for his role in running a "feeder fund" for Madoff. On April 6, 2009, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed civil fraud charges against Merkin alleging he "betrayed hundreds of investors" by moving $2.4 billion of clients' money to Madoff without their knowledge. The complaint stated he lied about putting the money with Madoff, failed to disclose conflicts of interest, and collected over $470 million in fees for his three hedge funds, Ascot Partners LP with Ascot Fund Ltd., Gabriel Capital Corp., and Ariel Fund Ltd. He promised he would actively manage the money, but instead, he misguided investors about his Madoff investments in quarterly reports, in investor presentations, and in conversations with investors. "Merkin held himself out to investors as an investing guru... In reality, Merkin was but a master marketer."
* Carl J. Shapiro, women's clothing entrepreneur, self-made millionaire, and philanthropist, and one of Madoff's oldest friends and biggest financial backers, who helped him start his investment firm in 1960. He was never in the finance business. In 1971, Shapiro sold his business, Kay Windsor, Inc., for $20 million. Investing most of it with Madoff, that sum grew to hundreds of millions of dollars and possibly to more than $1 billion. Shapiro personally lost about $400 million, $250 million of which he gave to Madoff 10 days before Madoff's arrest. His foundation lost more than $100 million.
* The Hadon Organisation, a UK-based company involved in mergers and acquisitions: Between 2001 and 2008 The Hadon Organisation established very close ties with Madoff Securities International Ltd. in London.
* David G. Friehling, the sole practitioner at Friehling & Horowitz CPAs, waived indictment and pleaded not guilty to criminal charges on July 10, 2009. He agreed to proceed without having the evidence in the criminal case against him reviewed by a grand jury at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan. Friehling was charged on March 18, 2009, with securities fraud fraud, and four counts of filing false audit reports with the SEC. On November 3, 2009, Friehling pled guilty to the charges. His involvement in the scheme made it the largest accounting fraud in history, dwarfing the $11 billion accounting fraud masterminded by Bernard Ebbers at WorldCom. In May 2015, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain sentenced Friehling to one year of home detention and one year of supervised release, with Friehling avoiding prison because he cooperated extensively with federal prosecutors and because he had been unaware of the extent of Madoff's crimes. Swain suggested that Friehling be forced to pay part of the overall $130 million forfeiture arising from the fraud.
* Frank DiPascali, who referred to himself as "director of options trading" and as "chief financial officer" at Madoff Securities, pled guilty on August 11, 2009, to 10 counts: conspiracy, securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, perjury, income tax evasion, international money laundering, falsifying books and records of a broker-dealer and investment advisor. He agreed to "connect the dots" and to "name names", with sentencing originally scheduled for May 2010. Prosecutors sought more than $170 billion in forfeiture, the same amount sought from Madoff, which represents funds deposited by investors and later disbursed to other investors. The same day, an SEC civil complaint was filed against DiPascali. On May 7, 2015, while still awaiting sentencing, DiPascali died of lung cancer.
* Daniel Bonventre, former operations director for Bernard Madoff Investment Securities. He was convicted on 21 counts, and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
* Joann Crupi (Westfield, NJ; sentenced to six years in prison) and Annette Bongiorno (Boca Raton, FL; sentenced to six years in prison), both back office employees, were arrested in November 2010. "Authorities previously said Bongiorno was a staff supervisor and was responsible for answering questions from Madoff's clients about their purported investments. They allege she oversaw the fabrication of documents", according to the Associated Press.
* Jerome O'Hara (sentenced to two and a half years in prison) and George Perez (sentenced to two and a half years in prison), long-time employees of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS), were charged in an indictment in November 2010, and in a 33-count superseding indictment on October 1, 2012.
* Enrica Cotellessa-Pitz, controller of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, but not a licensed certified public accountant: Her signature is on checks from BLMIS to Cohmad Securities Corp. representing commission payments. She was the liaison between the SEC and BLMIS regarding the firm's financial statements. The SEC has removed the statements from its website. She pled guilty to her role.

Charges and sentencing

The criminal case is ''U.S.A. v. Madoff'', 1:08-mJ-02735.

The SEC case is ''Securities and Exchange Commission v. Madoff'', 1:08-cv- 10791, both U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. The cases against Fairfield Greenwich Group et al. were consolidated as 09-118 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

While awaiting sentencing, Madoff met with the SEC's Inspector General, H. David Kotz, who was conducting an investigation into how regulators failed to detect the fraud despite numerous red flags. Because of concerns of improper conduct by Inspector General Kotz in conducting the Madoff investigation, Inspector General David C. Williams of the U.S. Postal Service was brought in to conduct an independent outside review of Kotz's actions. The Williams Report questioned Kotz's work on the Madoff investigation, because Kotz was a "very good friend" with Markopolos. Investigators were not able to determine when Kotz and Markopolos became friends. A violation of the ethics rules took place if their friendship was concurrent with Kotz's investigation of Madoff.

Former SEC chairman Harvey Pitt estimated the actual net fraud to be between $10 and $17 billion, because it does not include the fictional returns credited to the Madoff's customer accounts.

Criminal complaint

''U.S. v. Madoff, 08-MAG-02735''.

The original criminal complaint estimated that investors lost $50 billion through the scheme, though ''The Wall Street Journal'' reports "that figure includes the alleged false profits that Mr. Madoff's firm reported to its customers for decades. It is unclear exactly how much investors deposited into the firm." He was originally charged with a single count of securities fraud and faced up to 20 years in prison, and a fine of $5 million if convicted.

Court papers indicate that Madoff's firm had about 4,800 investment client accounts as of November 30, 2008, and issued statements for that month reporting that client accounts held a total balance of about $65 billion, but actually "held only a small fraction" of that balance for clients.

Madoff was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on December 11, 2008, on a criminal charge of securities fraud

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