Bernard Madoff
Bernard L Madoff, it operated for more than 30 years causing a loss for $19.5 billion did one of the largest Ponzi schemes. Large banks had a suspicion about Madoff, but the banks did not report him to the authority they condoned the practice and assisted Madoff make more money. The astonishing thing about this was that the senior management of the banks such as UBS forbade investing their money in the Madoff accounts; JPMorgan Chase had loads of evidence about Madoff and even discussed a long list of suspicion.
The global financial sector has been significantly criminalized making an industry that tolerates systematic frauds. In the United States, the rate of prosecution of the financial institutions or their senior executives is very few and no convictions. Some of the prosecutable crimes that are committed during the bubble, crisis, and aftermath are bribery, honest service violation, and false statement to US government, RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Criminal Organization Act).
Most of the intelligent financial analyst started to bet against the bubble in 2004 while the bubble was growing Wall Street ensured that it kept going. Immediately the bubble began to end their incentive changed, most of the Wall Street analyst knew there was a bubble in 2006, and by then it had begun to collapse. The big hedge funds figured it out; they waited until the bubble was about to collapse and make most of their money through the collapse. As the bubble picked and eventually started to collapse, the senior executives lied about their company’s financial position and concealed other relevant information.
The Rico Act enables the prosecution of the leaders of criminal organizations; it provides that the racketeers must forfeit all ill-gotten gains. As time passes the prosecution of bubble –era frauds will tend to become difficult, this is because the statute of limitation for most of these crimes is short mainly three to five years. In some instances,