Wall Street swindler Madoff jailed for 150 years

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Now he really is a big name, and that name is accompanied with a big scandal, with a big sentence of 150 years in jail… so much for being a fraud of such a financial magnitude…

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Posted: 29 June 2009 2345 hrs

Bernard Madoff

NEW YORK: Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in jail Monday for masterminding an "evil" multi-billion-dollar investment scam that cheated thousands of people around the world.

"It is the judgment of this court that Bernard Madoff should be sentenced to 150 years in jail," Judge Denny Chin said, as he handed down the maximum term possible on 11 charges of fraud, theft and perjury.

He described Madoff's crimes as "extraordinarily evil" and said it was "not merely a bloodless crime that takes place on paper but one that takes a staggering human toll."

The tough sentence came even after Madoff, the former chairman of the Nasdaq, made a courtroom apology to his victims. "I am sorry," he told them simply. "I don't ask for forgiveness."

"I leave a legacy of shame to my family. I am responsible for a great deal of suffering and pain. I live in a tormented state," said the disgraced 71-year-old financier who now faces spending the rest of his life in prison.

"I cannot offer an excuse for my behavior," he added. "How do you excuse deceiving investors... and 200 employees?

"How do you excuse lying to my sons and two brothers? How do you excuse lying to a wife who stood by you for 50 years and still stands by me? There is no excuse for that."

Some of Madoff's victims vented their fury as they addressed the court.

Fraud victims stage protest following the sentencing hearing for Madoff

Cheryl Weinstein blasted Madoff as "a monster" and a "beast."

"He walks among us. But he is a beast who has fed upon us to satisfy his own needs... I am asking you to keep in a cage behind bars," she said.

Breaking into tears, Burt Ross, who lost five million dollars, said Madoff "has truly earned his reputation of being the most despised person in America today."

"I only hope that his jail sentence is long enough so that his jail cell becomes his coffin," said Michael Schwartz, 33, who said the money stolen from his family had been set aside to take care of his mentally disabled brother.

As court-appointed liquidators struggle to recover the missing billions, Judge Chin told the court: "I don't get the sense that Bernard Madoff said all that he could or told all that he knows."

Chin gave Madoff 10 days to appeal the sentence, but said there had not been a single letter from friends or family testifying to his good deeds. "The absence of such support is telling," he said.

And Madoff's wife, Ruth, finally broke her silence Monday to lash out her husband, saying: "All those touched by this fraud feel betrayed; disbelieving the nightmare they woke to.

"The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known all these years," she said in a statement.

"Many of my husband's investors were my close friends and family. And in the days since December, I have read, with immense pain, the wrenching stories of people whose life savings have evaporated because of his crime."

The verdict came some six months after the biting economic downturn forced Madoff to unmask himself as behind one of the biggest financial scams in history.

Prosecutors say about 13 billion dollars was handed to Madoff. The financier himself has talked about losing some 50 billion dollars, which is believed to be the amount that would have been paid out had the funds been properly invested.

Among Madoff's victims were Hollywood celebrities, international movers and shakers, some of the world's most famous banks and Jewish charities, some of which were forced to close after the scheme unraveled.

Madoff's jail cell.

Madoff told the court in March that of the billions of dollars that passed through his hands during the three-decade scam, he never invested one cent in the market. Instead he stashed the funds in a Chase Manhattan bank account.

The funds were then used to pay out "dividends" to investors in what is known as a "Ponzi scheme."

Chin has ordered that Madoff forfeit over 170 billion dollars in illegally obtained assets. And in an accompanying order, a district court also stipulated that Ruth Madoff be stripped of 85 million dollars in assets, leaving her with 2.5 million dollars in cash.

One lingering issue is how to return the stolen funds. Of the billions of dollars that were lost, prosecutors say only one billion dollars has been recovered.

The judge deferred the issue of restitution for another 90 days to give court-appointed liquidators more time to recover the missing funds.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Detectives suspected of fraud

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More of the 'abuse of authority' incidents? Elite detectives?

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LONDON - More than 300 elite Scotland Yard detectives are suspected of defrauding the taxpayer of millions of pounds by abusing their corporate credit cards.

Auditors who examined the American Express accounts of 3,500 officers involved in countering terrorism and organised crime reported almost one in 11 detectives to the Metropolitan Police's internal investigators.

A senior officer appeared to have spent £40,000 ($95,500) on his Amex card in one year, without authorisation. Items bought by others without permission include suits, women's clothing and fishing rods.

The scale of the suspected fraud, disclosed in an internal Metropolitan Police Authority report, will send shock waves through the force. Until now, the investigation into expenses fraud was thought to have focused on fewer than 40 officers.

It comes days after the potentially damaging disclosure of six officers facing investigation over claims that a drug suspect's head was forced into a lavatory which was flushed repeatedly.

The Amex cards were issued in 2006 to detectives from specialist operations, which includes those involved in diplomatic and royalty protection.

The use of Amex cards was halted in December 2007. A number of officers have already been arrested in connection with the investigation by the Directorate of Professional Standards. THE GUARDIAN

From TODAY, World –Monday, 15-Jun-2009

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A web of deceit

SATYAM COMPUTER SERVICES

Firm's managers duped customers as they lined their pockets, says report

NEW DELHI — Managers at India's Satyam Computer Services spun an elaborate web of fraud to attract customers and investors, while using stakes in the company to raise cash for themselves, according to a report by India's top investigation agency.

The deception played out over at least eight years, involved dual accounting books, more than 7,000 forged invoices, dozens of fake bank statements, thousands of unnecessary employees and auditors who received fees several times the market rate, according to a charge sheet filed by the Criminal Bureau of Investigation.

The 77-page document provides details of the scope of the fraud at Satyam, and lays out the bureau's case for charging six company managers, their PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors and an adviser with cheating, forgery and falsification of accounts.

Satyam managers, including the founding brothers B Ramalinga and B Rama Raju, "were able to attract prospective customers and investors by making them believe" that the company was "carrying out huge volumes of business", the report said.

The details of the bureau's investigation could bolster a string of class-action suits pending against Satyam managers and auditors.

Tech Mahindra, a joint venture between the Indian conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra and BT Group, won an auction to take over Satyam on April 13 with a bid valuing the company at US$1.1 billion ($1.66 billion). The deal may still need to clear regulatory hurdles in the United States and Europe.

The Raju family and their friends, which held 19 per cent of Satyam when it went public in 1992, "made hay when the sun was shining" by selling shares as they carried out the fraud, the bureau said.

More than 300 investment companies were started, some of which used loans backed by shares to invest in real estate and agriculture.

Banks issuing the loans included Deutsche Investments India, GE Capital Services and DSP Merrill Lynch.

Like many companies, Satyam had a multi-step process for taking customer orders, calculating what the work would cost and generating invoices.

Managers in different departments checked and crosschecked the figures as they passed through the system.

But employees in the accounts receivable team could also practise "emergency generating of invoices" which bypassed most of the steps, the report said.

From the beginning of April 2003 to the end of 2008, nearly 75,000 of these special invoices were created.

Of these, 7,561 were fraudulent, generated to make Satyam look as if it had more business than it did.

From 2004 until the fraud came to light when Ramalinga confessed in January this year, sales were inflated 18 per cent a quarter on average, for a total of about 42.6 billion rupees ($1.3 billion).

The Raju brothers are accused of forging receipts for bank deposits and destroying the forgeries.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

From TODAY, Business – Thursday, 23-April-2009