Madoff: An Insider's View Conclusion.
"Madoff Employee Breaks Silence" By Lucinda Franks, The Daily Beast {Excerpt-Link & final comment @ the end of the article.} This article originally appeared 3.23.09.
BERNIE, ‘OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE’ “Yet take the 18th-and 19th-floors: Bernie was obsessive compulsive about the floors where the legitimate businesses were,” he said. “Everything had to be black. The computers, the tables, even the picture frames. If he saw a kid’s picture in a silver frame, for instance, he would order the offender to get a black frame. If you had a jacket over the back of your chair, he would take it off....“Now that I look back on it, I wonder whether he wanted the proprietary and market-making businesses to appear perfect, to create the impression that they was really profitable and legitimate.”
Why was the messy 17th floor so antithetical to Bernie’s weird passion for neatness and uniformity? "Maybe he just didn’t care,” said the employee, “as long as they did their job. He let Frank Di Pascali run it.” Di Pascali, a longtime Madoff employee, has reportedly refused to talk to investigators. “He was a very off-putting man,” the employee said. “Rough, not very friendly. He had a thick New York accent, not a very cultured manner. When we were at one of the Montauk beach parties, his son was there and he used the word ‘Guinea’ to describe him.”
Bernie was only around about half the year, according to the employee: “The other half he spent at his houses in France, Palm Beach, wherever he and Ruth landed.”
The 19th floor, where the employee worked, was where the proprietary-trading business was located. The 18th-floor stored all the trades and the emails, and of course the 17th floor was the nexus of the Ponzi scheme. “But the three businesses seemed comingled. There were two men on the 18th floor offices who I think knew what was happening,” said the employee. “They made huge salaries. The 17th floor not only produced the falsified statements, they did the accounting for our office on 19. Emails of both the legitimate and illegitimate businesses were handled and stored on the 18th floor.
What should have been a red flag, the employee said, was that the 17th floor’s statements detailing the financial output of his four-man computer unit often did not match what they calculated for themselves.......
ROLE OF OTHER MADOFFS When Bernie was away, were members of the family the ultimate bosses who oversaw the illegal operations that Di Pascali allegedly ran? Some employees are wondering now whether they were because, outside of Mark and Andrew, none of them seemed to do what they were ostensibly hired to do. “I didn’t even know that Peter (Madoff’s brother) was the firm’s compliance officer,” the employee said......“Shana Madoff , the compliance legal counsel, Peter’s daughter who was married to an SEC compliance officer, only spent half time in the office. When she was here, she seemed to work on human resources rather than compliance.”
Ruth was the firm’s bookkeeper: “But I only saw her walk through once or twice,” Some friends of the employee, in hindsight, have said that Andrew and Mark must have known or suspected that things were not kosher. “They were educated guys, one of them had gone to Wharton, I think. They saw the balance sheets. We were making no money, some years losing it, and the brothers, I heard, were getting $4 million annually. That just didn’t track.”
“But I don’t want to believe that they knew or were involved,” the employee said. “I believe they're innocent. They were really nice guys, they looked very straight.....When I told them I wanted to leave, Andrew tried to persuade me to stay and when I declined, he let me work only four days a week so I could start up my computer business.
‘IT WAS GOOD TO WORK FOR BERNIE’“We all joked that the motto of the place was that ‘it was good to work for Bernie.'
“We assumed Bernie was a billionaire and we didn’t understand why he didn’t leave his money in safe investments and just collect interest. Why did he support this lousy business? It didn't seem worth it for a billionaire.” In court, Madoff admitted that at one point he put $250 million of clients’ money into the legitimate businesses.
“But it was drummed into us that Bernie was into positions for the long haul, that he believed the stock market was cyclical and that eventually what was down would come up. So I thought that Andrew and Mark just believed what their father said and followed his philosophy......"
When asked how he felt when the Ponzi scheme was revealed, the employee became silent. "At first I was detached. I didn’t have relationships with the Madoffs like lots of others did. I had no emotional connection."
He looked down. "But now, I keep thinking about the 90-year-old man who lost even his house and is bagging groceries. Then I think of the fact that I may have gotten paid with his money."
Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-19/madoff-employee-breaks-silence/full/
My Comment: I've long felt that their have to be many others {most likely the Madoff family especially his sons that have to be in on this. The operation was simply to big & too complex for him to have run it alone this successfully all these years. In the end I think they're all going to jail.
Why was the messy 17th floor so antithetical to Bernie’s weird passion for neatness and uniformity? "Maybe he just didn’t care,” said the employee, “as long as they did their job. He let Frank Di Pascali run it.” Di Pascali, a longtime Madoff employee, has reportedly refused to talk to investigators. “He was a very off-putting man,” the employee said. “Rough, not very friendly. He had a thick New York accent, not a very cultured manner. When we were at one of the Montauk beach parties, his son was there and he used the word ‘Guinea’ to describe him.”
Bernie was only around about half the year, according to the employee: “The other half he spent at his houses in France, Palm Beach, wherever he and Ruth landed.”
The 19th floor, where the employee worked, was where the proprietary-trading business was located. The 18th-floor stored all the trades and the emails, and of course the 17th floor was the nexus of the Ponzi scheme. “But the three businesses seemed comingled. There were two men on the 18th floor offices who I think knew what was happening,” said the employee. “They made huge salaries. The 17th floor not only produced the falsified statements, they did the accounting for our office on 19. Emails of both the legitimate and illegitimate businesses were handled and stored on the 18th floor.
What should have been a red flag, the employee said, was that the 17th floor’s statements detailing the financial output of his four-man computer unit often did not match what they calculated for themselves.......
ROLE OF OTHER MADOFFS When Bernie was away, were members of the family the ultimate bosses who oversaw the illegal operations that Di Pascali allegedly ran? Some employees are wondering now whether they were because, outside of Mark and Andrew, none of them seemed to do what they were ostensibly hired to do. “I didn’t even know that Peter (Madoff’s brother) was the firm’s compliance officer,” the employee said......“Shana Madoff , the compliance legal counsel, Peter’s daughter who was married to an SEC compliance officer, only spent half time in the office. When she was here, she seemed to work on human resources rather than compliance.”
Ruth was the firm’s bookkeeper: “But I only saw her walk through once or twice,” Some friends of the employee, in hindsight, have said that Andrew and Mark must have known or suspected that things were not kosher. “They were educated guys, one of them had gone to Wharton, I think. They saw the balance sheets. We were making no money, some years losing it, and the brothers, I heard, were getting $4 million annually. That just didn’t track.”
“But I don’t want to believe that they knew or were involved,” the employee said. “I believe they're innocent. They were really nice guys, they looked very straight.....When I told them I wanted to leave, Andrew tried to persuade me to stay and when I declined, he let me work only four days a week so I could start up my computer business.
‘IT WAS GOOD TO WORK FOR BERNIE’“We all joked that the motto of the place was that ‘it was good to work for Bernie.'
“We assumed Bernie was a billionaire and we didn’t understand why he didn’t leave his money in safe investments and just collect interest. Why did he support this lousy business? It didn't seem worth it for a billionaire.” In court, Madoff admitted that at one point he put $250 million of clients’ money into the legitimate businesses.
“But it was drummed into us that Bernie was into positions for the long haul, that he believed the stock market was cyclical and that eventually what was down would come up. So I thought that Andrew and Mark just believed what their father said and followed his philosophy......"
When asked how he felt when the Ponzi scheme was revealed, the employee became silent. "At first I was detached. I didn’t have relationships with the Madoffs like lots of others did. I had no emotional connection."
He looked down. "But now, I keep thinking about the 90-year-old man who lost even his house and is bagging groceries. Then I think of the fact that I may have gotten paid with his money."
Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-19/madoff-employee-breaks-silence/full/
My Comment: I've long felt that their have to be many others {most likely the Madoff family especially his sons that have to be in on this. The operation was simply to big & too complex for him to have run it alone this successfully all these years. In the end I think they're all going to jail.
posted by CR English at 6:43 AM
<< Home