I really did not know many of the details of the Ponzi scheme going into this documentary so it was definitely eye opening for me. He started out way back in 1960 trading pink sheets (think Wolf of Wall Street). He eventually was an early adopter of the use of technology in trading. The technology his company developed eventually became the NASDAQ. His company was the number one market maker, which means it acts as an intermediary for financial trades, for many years. The most baffling aspect of this whole thing is he would have been plenty wealthy just from this legitimate business. What is the motivation to move to a criminal scheme that causes so much damage? Greed is the simple answer but there is something more. He was clearly a sociopath. Some of the details of the fraud we learn are that he regularly sent falsified statements to investors. They would include a list of fictitious trades with no losses and a nice profit. He did regularly return money to investors who requested it and always kept getting enough new investment dollars to stay one step ahead of these requests. One of the more frustrating aspects of this case is that the SEC was alerted multiple times and failed to do even the most basic of due diligence. For example, all they had to do was verify even a single trade and they would have discovered that the trade did not occur. This documentary is well worth watching even if it is bound to further deteriorate any faith one might have in our financial institutions.
Review of Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street
