Harry Markopolos blew the whistle to the Securities and Exchange Commission about Bernard Madoff as early as 2000. Why were his warnings ignored? Steve Kroft has the interview.
His book, "No One Would Listen" is well worth a read. This book goes farther to answer the questions of how and why Madoff did it than anything else I've found so far. Has anyone else noticed Harry bears a strong resemblance to Bob Odenkirk of Better Call Saul?
"It took me five minutes to know it was a fraud. It took me another almost four hours of mathematical modelling to prove that it was a fraud." I spilled my tea.
ruzzell907 Imagine what AI could do then. (A little secret here, he mentioned calculus, linear algebra, and statistics. Neural networks combine all of that in one.)
Mathematics at its core is all about "showing proof". That's why I love Math. I really like this gentleman & his attempt at having justice prevail... It's too bad that the SEC was in bed with Madoff! 🤬
@@jalapenohiway Very interesting that you expressed an affinity for Math, which I presume is meant to imply that you appreciate objectivity. I say that because you then immediately followed by expressing a view that is completely steeped in bias. I'm no lover of the SEC, but the SEC was not "in bed" with Madoff - by the time of this fiasco, federal oversight of financial transactions on Wall Street had been stripped practically bare by the federal government, with Greenspan and his pals advocating that fraud, etc. should be left for the markets to address, rather than to be prosecuted. The SEC had no budget and no support from which gain fuel to do any sustained investigations of anyone.
This guy Markopolos, Interviewer: “What if he’s just good?” Markopolos: “No one’s that good.” Interviewer: “Either way he was doing something illegal.” Markopolos: “Either way I knew he was going to prison.” Me: SAVAGE.
Harry Markopolos is a true hero. He found the truth and tried to tell everyone. And nobody would listen. They looked the other way. Now people listen to him.
Robert Mueller should bring Markpolis onto the Special Counsel's Team. It would interesting to have an independent 'outsider' check through the 'maths' of Trump's deals and accounts.
Same in the medical profession. Everyone knows who the bad doctors are, but nothing happens if concerns are raised. The difference being that those raising the concerns have their careers ruined and never work again
America is rapidly declining into a fifth world nation. In This kind of nation, the merit system is a minority player. Politically correct corruption rules the day.
5 submissions of fraud, over an 8 year period, until the SEC finally listened? I think that they should be held responsible for failing to protect investors and also, start cleaning " house" over there, because the people in charge, are not financially savvy!
Amazing piece. Unbelievable how Markopolis lays bare the incompetence of SEC, as well as its practices to only investigate after a major figure turns self in.
So who at the SEC got fired for their incompetance. Everyone who signed off on closing the case against Madoff should have been fired. They were complicit in his fraud.
The “chosen people” protect themselves, and they not only run Wall Street they run The Bureaucracies in America. Just check out the surnames, it tells the whole story. Try getting a job or running a business with the wrong surname in, well let’s say finance, banking, jewelry, Hollywood. The list goes on.
@@elroyvieira5909 im also thinking that the head of the SEC are putting key people in specific positions to have multiple layers of protection. oh the conspiracy 🤣🤣🤣
Thanks for figuring out the Madoff scheme. Too bad so many people lost out and Mark Madoff committed suicide from humiliation he felt he could never overcome. Very sad for Mark's wife and children.
@@dredgewalker Thats the real kicker isn’t it? Someone as brilliant as Madoff could’ve made these huge amounts of money legitimately with smart investing. And yet he destroyed his family and everyone else around him, only to lose all his money in the end anyway.
@@Anthony-jo7up He just wanted easy money without thinking about the consequences. In a sense he was both smart and stupid at the same time. Smart enough to steal that much money from people and too dumb to realize it will all be exposed and he'd lose everything. Still baffles me how people can be this greedy as you don't need that much money to live a comfortable life. Losing his whole family due to the troubles it caused wasn't worth it. It just shows no matter how much money you have and still isn't satisfied then it's not money that you need to be happy.
This is one of the best interviews I've ever seen retaining to the Bernie Madoff case. Harry Markopolos is an intelligent man and it's a shame no one listened to him before the fact. But we are listening now Harry.
3:29 I actually read his book “No One Would Listen” Markopolos gave a third possible explanation. That Madoff was an extraterrestrial with near perfect market predictability.
Harry - you did the right thing. You could have easily looked away and allow more victims to fall prey. But you didn't. You stood against evil. You fought the battle and won. It takes a real man to do what you did. This will be your legacy. Thank you.
A friend of mine was one of the people that suspected that Madoff was fraudulent. He is worth an ungodly amount of money. He was living in NY and in Palm Beach at the time. When he would be in Palm Beach, all of these people he knew were investing with Madoff and he said it was almost like a status symbol to be 'allowed' to invest with Madoff. And these people would sorta look down on him despite the fact that he was worth far more money than they were. Eventually he was told by people what the returns where and like Markopolos, knew that it had to be some sort of fraud. He had a contact at the SEC and told him about the returns Madoff was claiming and that it had to be impossible, but the SEC never looked into it. He then told people that he knew, that he was friendly with, that were investing with Madoff to get out and they bristled at the notion...thinking he was jealous because he wasn't investing with Madoff and they were.
Yeah, but it was all outsiders. Bernie chose his investors wisely because he wouldn't dare approach somebody like my friend, who despite being far wealthier than Bernie's investors, he was respected on Wall Street and would have exposed Bernie. Problem was that given Bernie's status my friend didn't have definitive proof like Markopolos had to blow the entire thing up.
SEC is as good as the people who run it. You can't put people who are friendly with people like Bernie Madoff as heads of the SEC. You can't put the fox as the head of the hen house.
RigelOrionBeta, Your analogy makes absolutely no sense. If the SEC was a fox, and Bernie Madoff was a hen, he'd be eaten by the fox. He wasn't eaten, therefor the SEC is not a fox and Madoff was not a hen.
I like to think that our government is staffed with people just like us. Some are doing time in their jobs, some are highly motivated, some are way out of their league, some are a victim of the Peter principal (promoted up to the point of their incompetence), and some are good at their jobs and have good intentions. The SEC is like any company, just staffed w people, average joes, and like our presidents, we hold them up to higher standards than we should.
Definitely he is a smart guy and he knows his math, but any ordinary financial analyst could have figured this out if they wanted to. The evidence was stark and overwhelming. Anyone with a background in statistics identifies this scam, you don’t need calculus.
You’re a fool. You believe whatever they tell you. Math is a mind game. A scam. Numbers only exist in the mind. It is a weak attempt to understand the logic of the Universe. I contend that man has no ability to genuinely comprehend what you call math. The Universe is infinite (as are numbers), and man is finite.
what could they have done?. the sec was bribed. And he was the leader of the nasdaq. The lesson of the story is to be diversified and not invest all you money in one nest.
Just finished Harry's book and it was fantastic. Here's the thing, I'm glad Bernie and Peter and a couple others were found guilty and sent to jail. Rightly so. I'm wondering why Shana Madoff, Andrew Madoff and Ruth Madoff are still walking around with any money in their pockets, taking trips, enjoying life. Their sob stories are ridiculous. Shana's fb page boasts about her Yoga, and Andrew Madoff's fb page shows him touring the Grand Canyon, Arches, Moab and Canyonlands National Parks on a brand new BMW motorcycle with the comment "it was so great to tour the parks by motorcycle because I was able to cover both parks in two days." Their denial that they knew nothing about the Ponzi scheme is a farce, and here's why. Shana was the Compliance lawyer; Her job is to know the products and make sure they are following securities regulations. How could she just completely miss out on Bernie's hedge fund? Clearly she knew that Mark and Andrew's trading operation was not handling Bernie's hedge fund trades on the 18th and 19th floors, and even though the SEC was too stupid to figure out there was a secret 17th floor, she would have HAD to have known about the 17th floor, and wasn't it her job as compliance lawyer to examine that as well? And let's suppose that Andrew and Mark didn't EVER go down to the separate secret 17th floor, don't you think they would be suspicious that there were NO TRADERS working on the 17th floor? They would have had to have known just from the Christmas Parties and their famous summer Montauk parties that there were NO TRADERS/ANALYSTS from the hedge fund. Certainly they knew Bernie wasn't capable of calculating the split strike conversion strategy that he boasted of, or make the trades.... there had to be some human component to the day to day trading operations.. Since Andrew and Mark weren't making the trades for Bernie's hedge fund, don't you think they would have asked where the PHANTOM TRADES were being executed? So where was the STAFF that was supposedly running the hedge fund? These three (Shana, Mark and Andrew) aren't stupid. Shana and Mark went to University of Michigan, and Andrew went to Wharton. There is no way they could be THAT naive. Andrew and Mark used "loans" from Bernie (stolen money loans) to purchase real estate. ALL of their assets should be stripped from them. They should be forced to take their kids out of private schools, forced to take out student loans for their kids college expenses, and then just maybe, just maybe,be allowed to inhabit a Habitat for Humanity House, like the rest of the 99% of the population. They ruined SO many people's lives, and I don't think they have any clue whatsoever. Their claiming ignorance is ridiculous; they would've HAD to have known SOMETHING was going on. It's tragic that Mark took his life, but Shana and Andrew need to be locked up for a minimum of 5 years AND stripped of every single penny. And Shana needs to wipe that bitchy, holier than thou grin off of her face. She was a compliance lawyer and she didn't do a damn thing to stop this fraud; she should be stripped of her law license. She's lower than pond scum.
Mark Madoff hung himself two years after his father's conviction. Andrew just died this past summer from cancer. The family is dismantled so don't be fooled by some FB posts, they are not as happy as they may seem. btw I agree with you that they all probably knew or should have known.
Both Madoff sons have deceased, Ruth is in hiding, probably not in this country. His sons were definitely aware of the scam, I don't know about Ruth. I know nothing of Shana Madoff, I will have to look at that.
Anonymous His family was almost certainly totally innocent. This is just vile hatred directed at the undeserving. They were his victims too. On top of the fact that he was family and the patriarch of the family, you are overlooking just how respected Madoff was. He was the former chairman of the NASDAQ for god’s sake! His integrity was what he was famous for. How easily he got people to trust him was how he got all these investors. If you were his family, you almost surely would’ve trusted him too. And also, before this happened, a Ponzi scheme this big had never been discovered. It would’ve been almost unbelievable that a Ponzi scam so big could even be carried out. People were stunned when this was revealed. It just would’ve seemed more realistic that their father was a great investor, than maybe the greatest fraudster ever. Great investors are rare, but they do exist. Con men who control portfolios in the billions? That’s rarer, maybe even unique. Even the very existence of the SEC would’ve reassured them. People trust the SEC. If not for Markopolos, most wouldn’t be aware how inept they could be, and how little they know of finance. Just listen to Madoff in this very video talking quite convincingly of the SEC, and how you can’t fool them. It’s easy to see how people would’ve bought that BS hook, line and sinker - unless you were an expert like Markopolos, you’d probably have no clue of anything about the SEC, and how they could possibly fail to notice such a huge scam.
Look at the thumbs up / thumbs down votes on this sub-thread (after 3 years!). Anonymous has +7 (after I gave him one) and all the replies have 0. Who is stuffing the ballot here, and how are they doing it? 99.99% of Americans would want to +1 this entire thread. So who is BUYING the down votes?
I agree, I haven't read the book, but the documentary on this gentleman's findings was great, it also shows that it was a worldwide ponzin scheme that included governments. This whole scheme was sickening, disgusting, and financially scary.
This man is a true American hero. Not only is he a mathematical genius, but he’s also courageous enough to go after big business, and expose them, as well as other fraudulent government regulatory agencies, to shareholders, & to the public. I wish there were more people like him around.
wasilaify And not the first. Enron was pulling the wool over the SECs eyes for years. Very obvious fraud that a chimpanzee with a elementary education could have seen. It should be noted that all of these "financial disasters" have happened when the GOP was in charge. Not a coincidence. GOP+ Smaller Government + Less Regulation + Looser Rules = More Fraud.
Uh both Enron and Worldcom started falling apart less then a year into Bush admin, blaming that on Bush is idiotic. Chris Dodd was probably the single most corrupt politician with his hand in the Enron fiasco and had a big D next to his name. Not excusing repubs there as bad but its more like whoever is in power sells out to wall street as they get most of there campaign funding from them.
It's not just the SEC. My bet is this one of the consequences of "red tape" and "government waste," an issue that involves pretty much every government agency and executive department.
I would like to hear from the people that actually made money for those 25 years. It never gets talked about or interviewed the clients that actually made good profits with Madoff.
Markopolos did not take Madoff down. The SEC never listened to Markopolos. Madoff ran out of funds, admitted the scheme to his sons and his sons contacted the FBI. The SEC only performed the autopsy. I can proudly say I actually watched the video and read about the incident.
The SEC is full of incompetent inept government employees. How many of these SEC government employees have been fired? Basic auditing 101 would have raised many flags.
@Honesty First It's a quote of Bonaparte and I fully support it. If you are too honest people and organizations (the state) will take advantage of that. Poor is if you do not have the resources to do things you would like to do or achieve.
Honest? Lol. They knew it was too good to be true. They just caught the short end. Someone tells me a portfolio is returning more than 10%, and I’ve got 700 questions. These people were greedy, gullible, and lazy, all of which-ironically-takes a certain amount of effort. I don’t feel sorry for them at all.
better yet? Before investing 10k, or 10 million, take a very short series of classes on investing. Literally, 12 hours of your time, and boom, you could see the split strike fraud a million miles away.
Not that simple. Madoff's phoney "investments" had diversity written all over them. And a lot of people had no idea that their money was even with Madoff. If by Diversify you mean.. not putting ll your money in the stock market, then yes.
Yeah I'm buying puts on GE, I remember reading years ago about Macropolos in a book about Enron. Believe me he was attacked just as ruthlessly then and CEO's bought shares and reassured. He was right. He'll be right again, he doesn't care about the money this guy only cares about the truth lol.
Petar same here. GE is in a world of hurt after this. The fact that this man made money from his investigation doesn’t take away anything from the findings. KPMG made money pretending GEs books were clean. The directors of GE made money too.
I wish the Senate got rid of the SEC entirely. Stop telling people there's no insider trading going on at Wall St. YOU ENTER THE STOCK MARKET AT YOUR OWN PERIL. Let's see how long the BS lasts if unsuspecting working people pull out of the stock market entirely!
Mathematics at its core is all about "showing proof". That's why I love Math. I really like this gentleman & his attempt at having justice prevail... It's too bad that the SEC was in bed with Madoff! 🤬
OMG. This 80 year old man lost an 8, let say it again, 8 figure fortune and is left with only enough income for 60 freaking daze? Couldn't he have invested 4 figures, 5 figures, even 7 figures instead? People need to understand the concept of the bugout bag.
I read somewhere "don't invest anything that you can not afford to lose". Also, make sure your investments are diversified and have cash set aside for emergencies or you lose your source of income.
"Because people in glass houses don't throw stones" What a perfectly beautiful answer.
"no one is that good" - god bless this man
Not even the juus😂
The SEC didn't turn Madoff in, his own sons went to the FBI. The SEC did zero.
That is a very intelligent man there. Highest respect he deserves.
His book, "No One Would Listen" is well worth a read. This book goes farther to answer the questions of how and why Madoff did it than anything else I've found so far.
Has anyone else noticed Harry bears a strong resemblance to Bob Odenkirk of Better Call Saul?
Totally thought this was Odenkirk at like a quick glance
He would be the perfect actor for a movie about this!
"It took me five minutes to know it was a fraud. It took me another almost four hours of mathematical modelling to prove that it was a fraud."
I spilled my tea.
ruzzell907 Imagine what AI could do then.
(A little secret here, he mentioned calculus, linear algebra, and statistics. Neural networks combine all of that in one.)
Mathematics at its core is all about "showing proof". That's why I love Math. I really like this gentleman & his attempt at having justice prevail... It's too bad that the SEC was in bed with Madoff! 🤬
@@jalapenohiway Very interesting that you expressed an affinity for Math, which I presume is meant to imply that you appreciate objectivity. I say that because you then immediately followed by expressing a view that is completely steeped in bias. I'm no lover of the SEC, but the SEC was not "in bed" with Madoff - by the time of this fiasco, federal oversight of financial transactions on Wall Street had been stripped practically bare by the federal government, with Greenspan and his pals advocating that fraud, etc. should be left for the markets to address, rather than to be prosecuted. The SEC had no budget and no support from which gain fuel to do any sustained investigations of anyone.
When you get to higher level math, proofs are 5x harder than actually solving the problem
the moral of the story is don't drink tea whilst operating you r calculator the equations could get hotter than ever
this guy is absolutely what integrity is all about....he should be head of the SEC
@@depression_isnt_real good to see that plenty of tin foil is being sold lately! do the hats fit okay?
This guy Markopolos,
Interviewer: “What if he’s just good?”
Markopolos: “No one’s that good.”
Interviewer: “Either way he was doing something illegal.”
Markopolos: “Either way I knew he was going to prison.”
Me:
SAVAGE.
😆😆😆😆😆
Harry Markopolos is a true hero. He found the truth and tried to tell everyone. And nobody would listen. They looked the other way. Now people listen to him.
Edwin Lindley Well he really is and he doesn't say he is and two of my friends are his kids
Robert Mueller should bring Markpolis onto the Special Counsel's Team. It would interesting to have an independent 'outsider' check through the 'maths' of Trump's deals and accounts.
Edwin Lindley The real question is at what cost?
Edwin Lindley no one believed, they thought it was too outrageous
They will go back to protecting their own, you'll see. The REAL crocks never serve much time.
LOVED one of the chapter titles in Harry's book: More Red Flags Than the Soviet Union.
That's funny lol.
Same in the medical profession. Everyone knows who the bad doctors are, but nothing happens if concerns are raised. The difference being that those raising the concerns have their careers ruined and never work again
America is rapidly declining into a fifth world nation. In This kind of nation, the merit system is a minority player. Politically correct corruption rules the day.
Money is the root of ALL evil.
5 submissions of fraud, over an 8 year period, until the SEC finally listened? I think that they should be held responsible for failing to protect investors and also, start cleaning " house" over there, because the people in charge, are not financially savvy!
I love the shade at the end: "That's typically how the SEC does it."
Amazing piece. Unbelievable how Markopolis lays bare the incompetence of SEC, as well as its practices to only investigate after a major figure turns self in.
So who at the SEC got fired for their incompetance. Everyone who signed off on closing the case against Madoff should have been fired. They were complicit in his fraud.
Very hard to fire government employees. So, corruption can prevail
The “chosen people” protect themselves, and they not only run Wall Street they run The Bureaucracies in America. Just check out the surnames, it tells the whole story.
Try getting a job or running a business with the wrong surname in, well let’s say finance, banking, jewelry, Hollywood. The list goes on.
When he talks, he calculates every word.
He calculates every word with, every calculus course, statistics both normal and non normal and linear algebra.
This man called the SEC out to filth 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I bought the book and it’s excellent. He tried for 10 years to get people to listen to him including the SEC.
That's because someone at the SEC was getting paid....follow the $$
@@elroyvieira5909 im also thinking that the head of the SEC are putting key people in specific positions to have multiple layers of protection. oh the conspiracy 🤣🤣🤣
@@elroyvieira5909 I'll bet the reason the SEC was blind to Madoff was because so many were investing with him.
One of the best “60 Minutes” segments ever! And there’s been a lot of great ones!
Please...60 Minutes is just as crappy a media organization as anyone else.
Thanks for figuring out the Madoff scheme. Too bad so many people lost out and Mark Madoff committed suicide from humiliation he felt he could never overcome. Very sad for Mark's wife and children.
I love the Power in Math, nothing more powerful than having a relationship with Numbers, PERIOD!!!!
numbers don't lie
that was quick MATHS
edwin storz 5
edwin storz I agree. I wish I had the gift.
sherry blackwood gift? Nothing is for free babe... hard work
Best verbal smackdown of the SEC I've EVER heard! Well done, Marco-Polo-is!
Fire everyone who works at the Securities Exchange Commission
"Self regulation doesn't work." This guy gets it.
A great man!
This shows how little our Government truly cares about us.
If you steal $100, your considered a their. If you steal a billion dollars your considered a genius.
I think you meant to write thief. Right?
To be honest it takes a genius to steal that much money from people while making them smile as you are robbing them
@@dredgewalker Thats the real kicker isn’t it? Someone as brilliant as Madoff could’ve made these huge amounts of money legitimately with smart investing. And yet he destroyed his family and everyone else around him, only to lose all his money in the end anyway.
@@Anthony-jo7up He just wanted easy money without thinking about the consequences. In a sense he was both smart and stupid at the same time. Smart enough to steal that much money from people and too dumb to realize it will all be exposed and he'd lose everything. Still baffles me how people can be this greedy as you don't need that much money to live a comfortable life. Losing his whole family due to the troubles it caused wasn't worth it. It just shows no matter how much money you have and still isn't satisfied then it's not money that you need to be happy.
"What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul?" - The Man from Galilee
the Lord Jesus
@K L calm down with that. No it was not Paul. It was Jesus Christ.
@Lu G. say what you really mean to say.
"Bernie Madoff is a gigantic piece of human excrement."
Jesus H Christ, 2019
The bible is clear. Read it
This is one of the best interviews I've ever seen retaining to the Bernie Madoff case. Harry Markopolos is an intelligent man and it's a shame no one listened to him before the fact. But we are listening now Harry.
I wish Harry Markopolos was head of the SEC
I second, third, and fourth that.
Aurelie-Anne Gilly koi
No way ! Those politician will fire him in less than a week .
You missed the point. There are no regulatory agencies that can keep anyone safe. People have to be there own advocates.
Unlikely to ever happen.
3:29 I actually read his book “No One Would Listen” Markopolos gave a third possible explanation. That Madoff was an extraterrestrial with near perfect market predictability.
Harry - you did the right thing. You could have easily looked away and allow more victims to fall prey. But you didn't. You stood against evil. You fought the battle and won. It takes a real man to do what you did. This will be your legacy. Thank you.
I'll bet he was hated by many for having shot the golden goose
But he didn't win. The economy collapsed and so did Madoff
Persistence, knowledge, performance line, comparison to baseball metaphor. Hes DOES deserve financial reward.
A friend of mine was one of the people that suspected that Madoff was fraudulent. He is worth an ungodly amount of money. He was living in NY and in Palm Beach at the time. When he would be in Palm Beach, all of these people he knew were investing with Madoff and he said it was almost like a status symbol to be 'allowed' to invest with Madoff. And these people would sorta look down on him despite the fact that he was worth far more money than they were.
Eventually he was told by people what the returns where and like Markopolos, knew that it had to be some sort of fraud. He had a contact at the SEC and told him about the returns Madoff was claiming and that it had to be impossible, but the SEC never looked into it. He then told people that he knew, that he was friendly with, that were investing with Madoff to get out and they bristled at the notion...thinking he was jealous because he wasn't investing with Madoff and they were.
Anyone who knows anything about he market would know that with the returns he was promising it had to be a fraud.
Yeah, but it was all outsiders. Bernie chose his investors wisely because he wouldn't dare approach somebody like my friend, who despite being far wealthier than Bernie's investors, he was respected on Wall Street and would have exposed Bernie.
Problem was that given Bernie's status my friend didn't have definitive proof like Markopolos had to blow the entire thing up.
The SEC is just as dirty as Madoff.
SEC is as good as the people who run it. You can't put people who are friendly with people like Bernie Madoff as heads of the SEC. You can't put the fox as the head of the hen house.
RigelOrionBeta, Your analogy makes absolutely no sense.
If the SEC was a fox, and Bernie Madoff was a hen, he'd be eaten by the fox. He wasn't eaten, therefor the SEC is not a fox and Madoff was not a hen.
I like to think that our government is staffed with people just like us. Some are doing time in their jobs, some are highly motivated, some are way out of their league, some are a victim of the Peter principal (promoted up to the point of their incompetence), and some are good at their jobs and have good intentions. The SEC is like any company, just staffed w people, average joes, and like our presidents, we hold them up to higher standards than we should.
@@Erin-Thor, "The Peter Pan" principle? LOL. It's called "The Peter Principal".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
Terje Oseberg - Thanks and whoops! 😁
I wish i had this guy for a math tutor. Id make the deans list.
Jam Man
No you wouldn’t.
He's a computer
@@cjr1881 mark Taylor the prophlet
I know right lol haha
5min to figure it out it was a fraudulent, 4 hours to prove it. This is a math genius.
Definitely he is a smart guy and he knows his math, but any ordinary financial analyst could have figured this out if they wanted to. The evidence was stark and overwhelming. Anyone with a background in statistics identifies this scam, you don’t need calculus.
Harry Markopolos for President.
Columbus found America - Markopolos found That It was a Froud !
All right, everybody, repeat after me.
Math. Doesn't. Lie.
theduchessofkitty only the people who teach us math. Case in point, one plus one is?
😂😂😂😂
MATH DONT LIE
BUT PEOPLE DO!!!!!!!
jb.shalom
Math isnt MAGIC. People should learn it....its really not that hard.
You’re a fool. You believe whatever they tell you. Math is a mind game. A scam. Numbers only exist in the mind. It is a weak attempt to understand the logic of the Universe. I contend that man has no ability to genuinely comprehend what you call math. The Universe is infinite (as are numbers), and man is finite.
It's amazing how many people knew ,Madoff, was running a scam and just turned a blind eye.
what could they have done?. the sec was bribed. And he was the leader of the nasdaq. The lesson of the story is to be diversified and not invest all you money in one nest.
apparently the major banks did...
“Self regulation in Wall Street doesn’t work”
@leonticonderoga2 - careful, lack of oversight led to 2008
No institution can regulate (or police) itself. Police departments need civilian reviews, the military needs civilians control, and so on.
That guy is incredibly smart
Steve Kroft is an excellent journalist! Sad he retired.
The biggest red flag is anyone telling you to put more than 5% in a single fund.
HARRY M. - is obviously a genius. he's terrific. Even after all these years, 7/3/20/... he's mesmerizing.!!!!
I wonder if the IRS audited him as a reward
The poor guy who lost his 8 figure savings is exactly why investors should diversify.
That's was so sad.
7:50 "It's virtually impossible to violate rules." This is a classic example of duper's delight... I'm sure he really got off on that one.
There is a famous saying that sound as follows: "It takes two Jews to tackle a Greek"
Markopoulos proved it right!
Just finished Harry's book and it was fantastic. Here's the thing, I'm glad Bernie and Peter and a couple others were found guilty and sent to jail. Rightly so. I'm wondering why Shana Madoff, Andrew Madoff and Ruth Madoff are still walking around with any money in their pockets, taking trips, enjoying life. Their sob stories are ridiculous. Shana's fb page boasts about her Yoga, and Andrew Madoff's fb page shows him touring the Grand Canyon, Arches, Moab and Canyonlands National Parks on a brand new BMW motorcycle with the comment "it was so great to tour the parks by motorcycle because I was able to cover both parks in two days." Their denial that they knew nothing about the Ponzi scheme is a farce, and here's why. Shana was the Compliance lawyer; Her job is to know the products and make sure they are following securities regulations. How could she just completely miss out on Bernie's hedge fund? Clearly she knew that Mark and Andrew's trading operation was not handling Bernie's hedge fund trades on the 18th and 19th floors, and even though the SEC was too stupid to figure out there was a secret 17th floor, she would have HAD to have known about the 17th floor, and wasn't it her job as compliance lawyer to examine that as well? And let's suppose that Andrew and Mark didn't EVER go down to the separate secret 17th floor, don't you think they would be suspicious that there were NO TRADERS working on the 17th floor? They would have had to have known just from the Christmas Parties and their famous summer Montauk parties that there were NO TRADERS/ANALYSTS from the hedge fund. Certainly they knew Bernie wasn't capable of calculating the split strike conversion strategy that he boasted of, or make the trades.... there had to be some human component to the day to day trading operations.. Since Andrew and Mark weren't making the trades for Bernie's hedge fund, don't you think they would have asked where the PHANTOM TRADES were being executed? So where was the STAFF that was supposedly running the hedge fund? These three (Shana, Mark and Andrew) aren't stupid. Shana and Mark went to University of Michigan, and Andrew went to Wharton. There is no way they could be THAT naive. Andrew and Mark used "loans" from Bernie (stolen money loans) to purchase real estate. ALL of their assets should be stripped from them. They should be forced to take their kids out of private schools, forced to take out student loans for their kids college expenses, and then just maybe, just maybe,be allowed to inhabit a Habitat for Humanity House, like the rest of the 99% of the population. They ruined SO many people's lives, and I don't think they have any clue whatsoever. Their claiming ignorance is ridiculous; they would've HAD to have known SOMETHING was going on. It's tragic that Mark took his life, but Shana and Andrew need to be locked up for a minimum of 5 years AND stripped of every single penny. And Shana needs to wipe that bitchy, holier than thou grin off of her face. She was a compliance lawyer and she didn't do a damn thing to stop this fraud; she should be stripped of her law license. She's lower than pond scum.
Mark Madoff hung himself two years after his father's conviction. Andrew just died this past summer from cancer. The family is dismantled so don't be fooled by some FB posts, they are not as happy as they may seem. btw I agree with you that they all probably knew or should have known.
Both Madoff sons have deceased, Ruth is in hiding, probably not in this country. His sons were definitely aware of the scam, I don't know about Ruth. I know nothing of Shana Madoff, I will have to look at that.
Anonymous
His family was almost certainly totally innocent. This is just vile hatred directed at the undeserving. They were his victims too.
On top of the fact that he was family and the patriarch of the family, you are overlooking just how respected Madoff was. He was the former chairman of the NASDAQ for god’s sake! His integrity was what he was famous for. How easily he got people to trust him was how he got all these investors. If you were his family, you almost surely would’ve trusted him too.
And also, before this happened, a Ponzi scheme this big had never been discovered. It would’ve been almost unbelievable that a Ponzi scam so big could even be carried out. People were stunned when this was revealed. It just would’ve seemed more realistic that their father was a great investor, than maybe the greatest fraudster ever. Great investors are rare, but they do exist. Con men who control portfolios in the billions? That’s rarer, maybe even unique.
Even the very existence of the SEC would’ve reassured them. People trust the SEC. If not for Markopolos, most wouldn’t be aware how inept they could be, and how little they know of finance. Just listen to Madoff in this very video talking quite convincingly of the SEC, and how you can’t fool them. It’s easy to see how people would’ve bought that BS hook, line and sinker - unless you were an expert like Markopolos, you’d probably have no clue of anything about the SEC, and how they could possibly fail to notice such a huge scam.
Look at the thumbs up / thumbs down votes on this sub-thread (after 3 years!). Anonymous has +7 (after I gave him one) and all the replies have 0. Who is stuffing the ballot here, and how are they doing it? 99.99% of Americans would want to +1 this entire thread. So who is BUYING the down votes?
I agree, I haven't read the book, but the documentary on this gentleman's findings was great, it also shows that it was a worldwide ponzin scheme that included governments. This whole scheme was sickening, disgusting, and financially scary.
This man is a true American hero. Not only is he a mathematical genius, but he’s also courageous enough to go after big business, and expose them, as well as other fraudulent government regulatory agencies, to shareholders, & to the public. I wish there were more people like him around.
"The man who knew"...... an awesome book by author Ralph Waldo Trine.....a must read for those who can!
A baseball player hitting 960 for a year you would suspect cheating immediately... I love that line
Its amazing, people who are already rich or have significant assets are not satisfied with what they have, they want more.
That and just taking pleasure in screwing others over.
@@curiousgeorge6921 idiot
All the big news orgs do an amazing job with details and reporting…after the criminal is already arrested, jailed, or dead.
great coverage
MAN embarrassing for the SEC.
wasilaify And not the first. Enron was pulling the wool over the SECs eyes for years. Very obvious fraud that a chimpanzee with a elementary education could have seen. It should be noted that all of these "financial disasters" have happened when the GOP was in charge. Not a coincidence. GOP+ Smaller Government + Less Regulation + Looser Rules = More Fraud.
Regulation bad. Ponzi scheme good. Those damn Democrats, always obsessed with more regulation!
+ wasilaify embarrassing for the jews
Uh both Enron and Worldcom started falling apart less then a year into Bush admin, blaming that on Bush is idiotic. Chris Dodd was probably the single most corrupt politician with his hand in the Enron fiasco and had a big D next to his name. Not excusing repubs there as bad but its more like whoever is in power sells out to wall street as they get most of there campaign funding from them.
It's not just the SEC. My bet is this one of the consequences of "red tape" and "government waste," an issue that involves pretty much every government agency and executive department.
I can't imagine the damage he's done to countless of families who depended on their last investment to live on. He ruined so many lives.
Why isn't the SEC held accountable?
I would like to hear from the people that actually made money for those 25 years. It never gets talked about or interviewed the clients that actually made good profits with Madoff.
60 Minutes: So, either way he was doing something illegal.
HM: Either way I knew he was going to go to prison.
The SEC needs smarter lawyers and are partly responsible. Thank goodness, Harry Markopolos took those math courses!
Can we make THIS man head of the SEC?????
He's got the perfect name. Bernie Madeoff with everyone's money.
That’s made me chuckle fair play 👍🏻😂
If Mr. Harry ran the SEC himself..... what a difference that would make.
Avneet Ghuman the
I can proudly say that my two best friends in the world are the sons of the genius who took down madoff
We heard you the first time.
elliethousand lmao!!!
Markopolos did not take Madoff down. The SEC never listened to Markopolos. Madoff ran out of funds, admitted the scheme to his sons and his sons contacted the FBI. The SEC only performed the autopsy. I can proudly say I actually watched the video and read about the incident.
Thats awesome
@@satinwhip Markopolos did the job for the SEC. He provided the evidence and the paper trail.
The SEC is full of incompetent inept government employees. How many of these SEC government employees have been fired? Basic auditing 101 would have raised many flags.
Respect to you Sir .....I bow to you for your story and for doing a great job 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
Trust no ONE!!!
3:26 “no ones that good”
Facts. It should’ve never gotten that big. The sec was just as much to blame as Bernie. They all but helped him.
Harry Markopolos is the modern day hero! Teach your kids about this honorable man!
This is why I'm amazed at that people still hold up Banks these days.
no ones that good.
THANK GOD FOR WHISTLE BLOWERS!!!!! THE SEC....SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUED AND THEIR PEOPLE JAILED!!! IMPOSSIBLE?? I THINK NOT!!!!
Harry should be head of the SEC. That guy is incredible
The SEC will never hire a reputable honest man. That is the truth.
An American folk hero-bless this man and other good men like him.
Anybody want to maybe check if Madoff was actually doing trades. The whole thing would have ended there. No, too much work I guess.
yup
That would demand effort.
Paul y ko
And his fund never submitted the required annual paperwork that would have declared all that information and the SEC didn't care.
"Madhoff's investment fund never actually made any trades..."
Here because of GE.
This guys kids get away with NOTHIN’
This guy was the kid who always skipped math classes in high school, but aced the tests
The SEC sucks if it hasn't wised up at this point.
The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.
@Honesty First It's a quote of Bonaparte and I fully support it. If you are too honest people and organizations (the state) will take advantage of that. Poor is if you do not have the resources to do things you would like to do or achieve.
@Honesty First So annoying...
Graziano Laudisio surest way to heaven is to be honest 😉
That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
GE is next... Go Harry!
Well done Harry. Shame on the SECC.
0:55 - I wouldn't have laughed either. BILLIONS of dollars stolen from honest people. This is not some fotoshoot. This is a tragedy.
Honest? Lol. They knew it was too good to be true. They just caught the short end. Someone tells me a portfolio is returning more than 10%, and I’ve got 700 questions. These people were greedy, gullible, and lazy, all of which-ironically-takes a certain amount of effort. I don’t feel sorry for them at all.
How to keep like Madoff from destroying you financially:
Diversify.
better yet? Before investing 10k, or 10 million, take a very short series of classes on investing. Literally, 12 hours of your time, and boom, you could see the split strike fraud a million miles away.
Not that simple. Madoff's phoney "investments" had diversity written all over them. And a lot of people had no idea that their money was even with Madoff. If by Diversify you mean.. not putting ll your money in the stock market, then yes.
Or never put all your eggs in one basket or in this case one firm.
@@lekkki1 sure.. U would've spotted it right away.. Hmhmm
@@YoungDen true.
Normie: at that point I was sure.
Mathematician: it was at this point my degree of certainty was approaching 100%.
Why do people never listen to guys like this?
Because he's not smooth or glib...but eccentric and honest.
I never trust anyone smooth or glib...lol
It’s harder to convince people they have been fooled.
well, im here because of GE :), to check who is this guy.
And, this is not good for GE :)
Petar same!
Yeah I'm buying puts on GE, I remember reading years ago about Macropolos in a book about Enron. Believe me he was attacked just as ruthlessly then and CEO's bought shares and reassured. He was right. He'll be right again, he doesn't care about the money this guy only cares about the truth lol.
Jackington Kellogers I upped my number of puts after 5 pages of the report.
Can't wait to see GE going down!
Petar same here. GE is in a world of hurt after this. The fact that this man made money from his investigation doesn’t take away anything from the findings. KPMG made money pretending GEs books were clean. The directors of GE made money too.
Proverbs
He that trust's in his riches shall fall, but the righteous shall flourish like a branch.
Harry Markopolos deserves national recognition, monetary compensation, an an appointment to Director of the SEC.
3:30 maybe he was good "nobody's that good" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
"No one's that good" Ominous words. "Mr Mad-Off" lol
Who else hears "Marco Polo" every time his name is mentioned?
Incompetent complicit government bureaucrats.
When the deal is too good think twice.........
People with a lot of money always want more. It’s never enough. I do feel bad for these people in a way but I have a hard time feeling sorry for them.
I wish the Senate got rid of the SEC entirely. Stop telling people there's no insider trading going on at Wall St. YOU ENTER THE STOCK MARKET AT YOUR OWN PERIL. Let's see how long the BS lasts if unsuspecting working people pull out of the stock market entirely!
Mathematics at its core is all about "showing proof". That's why I love Math. I really like this gentleman & his attempt at having justice prevail... It's too bad that the SEC was in bed with Madoff! 🤬
*Who investigates the SEC when they DIDN'T find anything on Madeoff.*
*THAT IS THE STORY 60 min.*
OMG. This 80 year old man lost an 8, let say it again, 8 figure fortune and is left with only enough income for 60 freaking daze? Couldn't he have invested 4 figures, 5 figures, even 7 figures instead? People need to understand the concept of the bugout bag.
Ken Johnson yeah the ignorance oozes right on out of you....
whats the bugout bag?
The entire system is a lie, don't invest anything.
I read somewhere "don't invest anything that you can not afford to lose". Also, make sure your investments are diversified and have cash set aside for emergencies or you lose your source of income.
@@V.E.R.O. To quote the Wu-Tang clan, "Diversify your bonds, n!&&@".