Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme

The Ponzi scheme
Small investors, financial institutions, global banks, police departments’ pension funds, the list goes on. These corporations were targets for scammers to feed a desire that wreaks havoc on these types of victims because greed is the key factor. When making deals in secrecy that’s too good to be true, one would have to expect to get a call one day informing them they have been conned, swindled, or defrauded. If you can’t trust a regulatory agency such as the Securities and Exchange Commission for vital answers when inquiring about any investor, who can you trust?
Ponzi schemes rely on inside help. Many articles believe that Madoff operated in a gray zone for years and that the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as

Bernie Madoff used the vulnerability and trust of his investors to fuel his ego and passion for greed. Although he did have the right setup for internal control, checks and balances, he committed accounting fraud, abuse of power and conflicts of interest (Cochran, 2012). There was a lack of Tone-At-The-Top (Madoff had complete control over monies and investment decisions for Avellino & Bienes). Perhaps there was not an awareness of ethical responsibility between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bernie Madoff, but when you have many investors motivated by personal gains being produced by such high returns, they too have unknowingly become involved in the fraud as well. Hartman (2012) states that when we act under the umbrella of ethics, we acknowledge our responsibility for the indications of what we say and do, which is why we should pay attention to our decisions, do some evaluation and learn from our outcomes and actions as individuals. However, we must be able to look beyond our blind

There are many steps the Securities and Exchange Commission should take to protect the interest of investors such as a customer service department to follow up on complaints against investors, execute thorough and detailed examinations of complaints, send someone to the company to understand how the business is running it’s day to day operations to increase transparency, increase penalties on businesses that running fraudulent practices. Prezi lists some steps the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken to try and insure Ponzi schemes are discovered 1) Revitalization of the enforcement division, 2) revamp how complaints and tips are handles, 3) find a way to encourage cooperation among the inside staff, 4) improve safety measures for investors monies, 5) improve competences relating to risk assessment, 6) perform examination of financial firms to assess their risk, 7) upgrade fraud protection techniques for examiners, 8) hire staff that specialize in the field of examining and auditing, 9) expand training to focus on target areas, 10) promoting the need for a whistleblower program 11) combine broker-dealing and investment advisor examinations, and 12) enrich the credentials of licensing, education, and oversight regime for “back office personnel” (Cochran, 2012 ).
The Securities and Exchange Commission is responsible