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Bernie Madoff — Arrest and receivership · 55

Madoff pleaded guilty on 12 March 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to eleven felony counts, including securities fraud, investment-adviser fraud, mail and wire fraud, money laundering, false statements, perjury, making false filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and theft from an employee benefit plan. Judge Denny Chin sentenced him on 29 June 2009 to 150 years in prison and ordered forfeiture later entered as about $170 billion on the paper losses. 55 Picard’s team matched statements to bank flows and filed hundreds of adversary actions to recover transfers. Keep Bernie Madoff with “Arrest and receivership” and 11 from 2009. Without the confession to family and the prompt report to authorities, the firm might have lingered days or weeks longer; the public investigation starts from that report.

After the arrest, court-appointed professionals found that the advisory side had not been executing the reported strategy for customers at the scale the statements implied. Customer money had been commingled and used to meet withdrawals and personal outflows, a pattern the plea allocution accepted.

Redemption requests surged in late 2008 as markets fell. Madoff told his sons, who worked at the firm, that the advisory business was a fraud; they contacted counsel, who notified federal authorities. The FBI arrest followed the next day. The criminal case did not go to a contested trial on guilt. The March 2009 plea, the June 2009 sentencing transcript, and later prosecutions of aides and family members supplied the factual core that civil recovery then used.

Harry Markopolos and others had submitted analyses to the SEC as early as 2000 arguing that the reported returns could not be real. Examinations occurred; they did not stop the advisory business. The SEC Office of Inspector General’s 2009 report, Investigation of Failure of the SEC to Uncover Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme, reconstructed those contacts. It is a primary document for why the case is taught as a regulatory failure as well as a fraud.

Say the name, the year, then the figure. For Bernie Madoff, “Arrest and receivership” is the name of 11. Keep Bernie Madoff with “Arrest and receivership” and 11 from 2009. 112009

Figures to keep

Year in the file
2009
Figure that fixes it
11
Case
Bernie Madoff
Line that was public
Arrest and receivership

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