Full attention has now been placed on Bernard Madoff's right hand man Frank DiPascali who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and other charges and has, according to the New York Times, admitted to the court that everything was a fake. Sham accounts were being created and money was being shuffled around in the Ponzi scheme. There was even a fake computer stock-trading platform and a random-number generator assigning times and amounts to trade records that never happened. "It was all fake. It was all fictitious. It was wrong, and I knew it was wrong at the time,' Di Pascali said.
The scheme was so preposterous, that you really have to wonder how Madoff could get away with it for so long. The court heard that this was happening as early as the 80s, so nearly 30 years ago. Why didn't the Securities and Exchange Commission pick it up?
A new book Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff by Andrew Kirtzman, as detailed here, says Madoff blinded regulators with bling. The SEC sent in inexperienced young guns who ended up asking Madoff for jobs. In other words, the SEC failed in its duty of care for investors.
The other significant part of DiPascali's testimony is that it contradicts Madoff's claim that he acted on his own.
Which raises the obvious question: who's next? How could his wife Ruth Madoff not know about the fraud? And what about the fund managers who sent him money from investors?
no comment untill now