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Will Madoff get away with stealing $50 Billion?

By Steve Lombardi

A long time ago I heard a criminal defense lawyer say the more outlandish a defense the more likely it is to be believed. Thus we had the Twinkie and my parents were less than perfect so I decided to commit murder defenses. The entire Bernie Madoff situation has me wondering about legal things.

Rattling around in my brain is this issue: What’s wrong with the Bernie Madoff picture, what does it say about society and what does it say about other major policy issues?

Here is a list of today’s conundrums that just seem to bounce around in my head. As you can see I’m confused; can someone help me understand the answers to these questions?

1. What kind of legal standard allows for a 9-year old boy to be capable of and pleading guilty to negligent homicide but a 70-year old stock broker swindling some $50+ Billion to sit at home cruising the Internet?

2. How could Madoff operate an investment fund, not trade stocks for 13 years and the SEC can't find there is a reason to think he’s committing fraud? On what did they base their analysis of the investment theory he disclosed to them?

3. How is it that a man can swindle investors out of $50 Billion dollars, admit to it and still be out of jail?

4. When you live in a luxurious $7 million Manhattan condominium can you ever be under “house arrest” or is the concept of “house arrest” an oxymoron?

5. If a governmental regulatory agency, the SEC, is not capable to find any hint of fraudulent conduct with an investment fund holding some $50 Billion that hasn’t traded stocks for a 13 year period, how is it Congress can trust our physical health to the FDA?

6. How it is Congress allows the FDA to approve prescription drugs for us to take based on research they know is faulty and has a myriad of financial conflicts of interest with those conducting the research?

7. Is there any amount of money a person can steal or any number of lives a person can destroy financially that will justify the death penalty? If not how about conscription and deployment to the front lines in Iraq? I wonder if there are any soldier’s parents who Madoff and his cohorts swindled.

8. Do stockholders really believe MBA’s will no longer work for pay that does not include multi-million dollar bonuses? How dumb do they think we are? Or how corrupt is the system?

9. If a candidate being interviewed for the CEO position of a major stock company expresses he won’t work unless he or she is in line for multi-million dollar bonuses, why isn’t he simply shown the exit door?

10. If not for a huge financial windfall, why would the owners of financial service company’s in which they own large amounts of stock allow the assets of the company to be risked with liar’s loans?

11. Has society become so dumb that it thinks greed is no longer a vice, but a virtue?

12. Will any person at the SEC be fired for incompetence over the Madoff investigation? (And you wonder how Madoff could take $50 Billion dollars on a Ponzi scheme from smart but busy investors and with the SEC being flagged about his “system of investing” not being remotely possible.)

13. Do any parents still teach the end does not justify the means? Or is that also now a virtue?

14. Can we trust stock brokers with access to an individual taxpayers social security funds? (Maybe the SEC needs access to Wilipedia? Ponzi scheme on Wilipedia. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit. The term "Ponzi scheme" is used primarily in the United States, while other English-speaking countries do not distinguish colloquially between this scheme and other pyramid schemes.)

15. Why do the Courts believe the FDA, through federal preemption, is protecting users of prescription drugs?

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on February 23, 2009 (boomark / email).