Bernard Madoff's Ponzi Scheme Case Study

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“Ponzi Scheme” was a term that was named after a criminal from the 1920s named Charles Ponzi who persuaded the investors to direct their investment in one of the most complex price arbitrage scheme that involved postage stamps (Cantoni 24). A Ponzi scheme makes use of the investments funds from new customers to facilitate the payment of the purported returns or profit to the existing investors. The perpetrators of such schemes can keep the losses incurred hidden from their clients through issuing of false trade confirmations or account statements which bolster the performance of the accounts with the hope to solicit new investments funds from the clients. Facts and Circumstances of the Case In December 2008, Bernard Madoff presented a revelation the arm that was concerned with the management of assets in his company was a big lie. He confessed having taken his investors an estimated $65 billion over the course of approximately twenty years. He conned not only the fat-cat billionaires but also the humble individual investors, charities and banks among others. This scheme was not revealed until the time when Madoff made a confession of his crimes. In 2009 March, he pleaded guilty to the charges that were placed against him thus he was sentenced to 150 years in jail in June (Smith 2). One of the reasons why Madoff was a successful man was the high …show more content…

These elements can be incorporated in the Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in various ways. For instance, fraud triangle refers to a given framework that is designed to provide an explanation to some of the reasons behind the decisions by an individual or worker to be involved in workplace fraud (Kassem and Andrew 12). In this case, there are three stages that are categorized by the impact on the individual which are summarized as pressure, opportunity and the