Comments

1. Cat_In_A_Hat says:
   February 17, 2009 at 6:47 pm

   oh man that’s sad.
2. Eldritch says:
   February 17, 2009 at 7:37 pm

   By this point, Madoff should be charged with murder.
3. Zeniq says:
   February 17, 2009 at 8:06 pm

   That is awful, imagine losing money to Madoff without even directly putting the money in his fund in the first place.

   • Anathema777 says:
     February 17, 2009 at 8:15 pm

     @Zeniq: I know! The poor guy put his money into two separate hedge funds. I can’t believe both of them sank all of his money into Berne Madoff. The article said that they’re under investigation as well.
4. razremytuxbuddy says:
   February 17, 2009 at 8:15 pm

   So tragic.
5. Vanilla5 says:
   February 17, 2009 at 8:24 pm

   So are the people who he originally invested his money with responsible for restitution at all? At least to his estate?

   If they invested poorly, is there no possibly way of recovering his money?
6. SlappySquirrel says:
   February 17, 2009 at 9:35 pm

   I can totally see the Law and Order episode coming.
7. Crim Law Geek says:
   February 17, 2009 at 9:58 pm

   The Madoff scandal is going to result in decades’ worth of litigation. Hedge funds, etc have a fiduciary duty to their investors to not invest in scams, or other things that will almost certainly lose the fund money, as well as to do due diligence before investing. Anyone who invested with Madoff, an obvious scam, totally blew it, and deserves to get their pants sued off.

   • gStein_*|bringing starpipe back|* says:
     February 18, 2009 at 12:17 am

     @Crim Law Geek: er, wait, what?
     if it was such an obvious scam, why did so many people invest and why did it stay alive for such a long period of time?

     • Crim Law Geek says:
       February 18, 2009 at 9:24 am

       @Gstein:
       It’s obvious if you spend more than a second looking into it, and that’s the crux of the matter. A lot of these fund managers, who were supposed to be the creme de la creme were fooled because they were lazy. Plenty of fund managers saw that anyone whose profit graph has a constant upward slope with absolutely no deviation, while the rest of the market market is tanking, cannot be legit.
8. jgodsey says:
   February 18, 2009 at 2:14 am

   can we charge this madoff guy with manslaughter? seems to me he needs a good beheading.
9. Oranges w/ Cheese says:
   February 18, 2009 at 2:19 am

   I still don’t understand (though I pity the guys’ survivors) WHY people think that killing oneself is the only option when all the money goes away. Now the family has to pay for a funeral, an investigation AND the rest of the crap they already couldn’t afford.
10. P_Smith says:
    February 18, 2009 at 3:10 am

    One has to wonder how many lawsuits we’re going to see over investments. I don’t use a broker and don’t trust the bastards, putting my money into safer stuff like term deposits and savings bonds. I see them as more concerned with fees than with protecting their clients.

    Did people who invest in stocks give instructions to brokers such as “low risk only” and their instructions were ignored? Don’t customers tell people “Buy IBM, not junk bonds” or do they give brokers too much control because they lack the knowledge?

    Maybe the mutual funds scam of 2003 should have been a warning to people of things to come.

    • P_Smith says:
      February 18, 2009 at 3:13 am

      @P_Smith: Two self corrections:

      1. “I see them as more concerned with fees…” – by “them”, I meant brokers.

      2. I wasn’t blaming the victim here, I was blaming the investment “business” as a whole for making this mess possible.
    • Aisley says:
      February 18, 2009 at 4:48 am

      @P_Smith: I agree with you P_S. My father thought me that if there’s a way to make money without hard work, NO ONE is going to share that way with you!!! I do have a couple of pennies in the market, but is out of sheer laziness. During the time I worked at McDonald’s, yeap I did that, I purchase just five shares. Since I have being lazy on cashing all of them out, right now I’m sitting in a tad nice amount. Not much go figure, but since I left McD almost a decade ago, it has gone up nicely. Oh, and yes I did cashed in the original amount invested. So if I loose the rest, I won’t feel that bad. By the way, has anybody had experiences with something called “socially responsible” or “religious” portfolios? Would love to hear your experience. A friend of mine, who’s Muslim, has his money invented in a religious one; and would you believe he has lost almost no money! Uhm, maybe that’s the way to go these days.