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МММ was a Russian company that perpetrated one of the world's largest Ponzi schemes of all time, in the 1990s. By different estimates from 5 to 10 million people lost their savings. According to contemporary Western press reports, most investors were aware of the fraudulent nature of the scheme, but still hoped to profit from it by withdrawing money before it collapsed.
Affinity fraud is a form of investment fraud in which the fraudster preys upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, language minorities, the elderly, or professional groups. The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are – or successfully pretend to be – members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme, by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster's ruse.
Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American financial criminal and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, worth an estimated $65 billion. He was at one time chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. Madoff's firm had two basic units: a stock brokerage and an asset management business; the Ponzi scheme was centered in the asset management business.
Jacob Ezra Merkin is an American investor, hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He had been a fund manager and capital raiser until 2008 when one of the funds in Gabriel Capital LP, his $5 billion group of hedge funds became insolvent because a large portion of its assets was invested with the convicted Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff. The fallout from his investment with Madoff has been extensive. He navigated a series of lawsuits without a finding of fraud or knowledge of the scheme, but agreed to repay any fees earned from the investment in Madoff historically. He had to resign a series of positions including his role as non-executive chairman of GMAC.
Harry M. Markopolos is an American former securities industry executive and a forensic accounting and financial fraud investigator.
René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet was a French aristocrat, money manager, and businessman. He was one of the founders of Access International Advisors, a company caught and subsumed in the Madoff investment scandal in 2008. He died by suicide after losing an estimated $1.4 billion in Madoff's scheme.
David G. Friehling is an American accountant who was arrested and charged in March 2009 for his role in the Madoff investment scandal. He subsequently pleaded guilty to rubber-stamping Bernard Madoff's filings with regulators rather than fully reviewing them. His role in covering up Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme makes it the largest accounting fraud in history.
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Frank DiPascali Jr. was an American fraudster and financier who was a key lieutenant of Bernie Madoff for three decades. He referred to himself as the company's "director of options trading" and as "chief financial officer". For a number of years, he played a key part in the daily operation of the Madoff investment scandal, later recounting how he helped manipulate billions of dollars in account statements so clients would believe that they were creating wealth for them.
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.
Participants in the Madoff investment scandal included employees of Bernard Madoff's investment firm with specific knowledge of the Ponzi scheme, a three-person accounting firm that assembled his reports, and a network of feeder funds that invested their clients' money with Madoff while collecting significant fees. Madoff avoided most direct financial scrutiny by accepting investments only through these feeder funds, while obtaining false auditing statements for his firm. The liquidation trustee of Madoff's firm has implicated managers of the feeder funds for ignoring signs of Madoff's deception.
The recovery of funds from the Madoff investment scandal has been underway since the scandal broke in December 2008. That month, recovery trustee Irving Picard received funds from the Bank of New York account where Bernard Madoff held new investments into his Ponzi scheme. As it has been concluded that no legitimate investments were made on the investors' behalf for at least the last 12 years of operation, recovery has proceeded on a "money in/money out" basis. Investors are entitled to receive no more than the nominal cash amounts that they paid in and did not subsequently withdraw, without regard to inflation, interest, opportunity cost or the false statements that Madoff provided them. Those statements combined to a total balance of approximately $64 billion, while the admitted claims amount to $19.5 billion. As of March 2024, the trustee had recovered $14.7 billion toward these claims through legal action against Madoff associates, feeder funds and beneficiaries of the scheme, and had made fifteen distributions to investors. Action by the Department of Justice has recovered an additional $4 billion.
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Daniel Bonventre is one of five former Madoff employees charged in the Madoff investment scandal.
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Aurelia Finance SA was a private bank and fund-management company in Geneva, Switzerland that was set up as a feeder fund to Bernie Madoff's illegal Ponzi scheme.
Low Taek Jho, often called Jho Low, is a Malaysian businessman and international fugitive, wanted by authorities in connection with the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal. He has been named the mastermind of the massive fraud, which prosecutors allege was a scheme to siphon US$4.5 billion from 1MDB into Low's personal accounts. He is the beneficiary of numerous discretionary trust assets said by the US government to originate from payments out of the Malaysian 1MDB fund. Low has maintained his innocence and contends that Malaysian authorities are engaging in a campaign of harassment and political persecution due to his prior support of former Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose part in the 1MDB scandal had led to Najib being convicted on seven counts of abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust.
Towers Financial Corporation was a debt collection agency based in Manhattan in New York City. Between 1988 and 1993, Towers Financial ran a Ponzi scheme that was the largest financial fraud in American history prior to Bernie Madoff's being uncovered.
References
- ↑ Liberation: Salah Ezzedine, le «madoff» libanais (in French)
- ↑ Andrew Lee Butters in Time magazine: Lebanon's Bernie Madoff - A Scandal Taints Hizballah
- ↑ "Time article" . Retrieved 21 November 2016.
- 1 2 3 "Mideast ‘Madoff’ scandal shames Hezbollah," NBC News.
- ↑ "A prominent Lebanese businessman was charged over the weekend," Khazen.
- 1 2 3 "Billion-Dollar Pyramid Scheme Rivets Lebanon," The New York Times.
- ↑ "Salah Ezzedine, the Lebanese 'Madoff' ?," France 24.
- ↑ "Hezbollah embarrassed by fraudster," Maclean's.
- ↑ [ "The Mediterranean Madoff; Hundreds of millions of dollars disappear in the Salah Ezzedine scandal"] Executive.
- ↑ Billion-Dollar Pyramid Scheme Rivets Lebanon
- ↑ Robert Fisk in The Independent: 'Lebanon's Madoff' bankrupted after bouncing $200,000 cheque to Hizbollah"
- ↑ "On Iranian Influence in Africa The Role of the Lebanese Shiite Community in West Africa and Hezbollah Worldwide Activities," ACLU.
- ↑ "Prosecutors Charge Lebanese Financier," The Wall Street Journal.
Category:People from Tyre District