Research Proposal on "Bernard Madoff Greed"

Research Proposal 3 pages (1050 words) Sources: 1 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Bernard Madoff & Greed

Bernard Madoff and Greed in Business

The people taken in by Bernie Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme may be seen as greedy, but Robert FitzPatrick, a nationally recognized expert on pyramid and Ponzi schemes as well as other consumer frauds, says that isn't the case with most people taken in by such frauds.

I've been to meetings where they promote these things, and I don't see a lot of greed in the room," he said. "I see desperation, need, hope.

Somebody will say the people taken in by these things are greedy and stupid. If that's the case, we're all stupid and greedy, then." (Dettro)

Bernard Madoff has been arrested for a multibillion fraud that stretched from Europe to Asia and America. Madoff built a giant pyramid scheme that helped him gain new investors all the time, which he used to pay off the old ones. As long as new investors were signing up, the deal worked perfectly. (Bhushan)

The driving motivation behind the scheme, from top to bottom, was greed. Everyone -- from Ponzi on down to the last "investor" recruited -- knew that in the end someone would be left "holding the bag;" that people would get hurt; and that some would be hurt very badly. They didn't care, just so long as it wasn't them. Most who involved themselves in the scheme felt that they could get "in and out" of the pyramid before it collapsed - and "to hell" with those who were "dumb" enough to get caught. (Bhushan)

The question that everybody with big chunks of money parked with exclusive fund managers on Wall Street will be asking today is whether there are other possible Bernard Madoffs out there: high-profile managers who've been lying about their returns for years. The answer to this is going to be "yes," which leads to the second question of, "Is there any way to spot them?" or, in other words: Is there a way to know whether a money manager's returns are too good to be true? (Gimein)

This is fraud that has gone wild," says Fitzpatrick. "It's no accident at all that Madoff took some of our smartest people for billions of dollars. There is no one dealing with these things." He said the pyramid schemes are disguised as "matrix selling" and "cash gifting" opportunities that assert their legality and legitimacy by citing lack of government action. (Chris Dettro 2)

But the Madoff scheme, unfortunately, is not the only one on the SEC's desk right now.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is pursuing at least one other case in which investors may have been cheated out of as much as $1 billion, according to a person, who declined to name the manager and asked not to be identified because the probe isn't public.

This week, the SEC said it also halted what the agency described as a $23 million scam targeting Haitian-Americans, and said the Florida- based operators as recently as last month sought more investors. (Bloomberg.com)

On the hot seat, too, are corporate leaders who made a profit in the midst of the crisis. "They were living so… READ MORE

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