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The Fraudulent Case of Bernard Madoff
A Ponzi scheme is type of con fiwhere one group of investors are paid by the investments
of another,” and has been around since the 1920’s when a man by the name of Charles Ponzi
promised his investors an 50% return after just 45 days. He told his clients that he was going to
achieve this by collecting postage stamps from other countries and then selling them in the U.S.
for higher prices. This was a lie, and Ponzi paid off his early investors with the money he was
receiving from his new ones. His scheme didn’t last more than a year but cost his clients around
15- 20 million dollars. However, Mr. Ponzi set into action a practice that would be the
foundation of the corruption of the modern-day Wall Street.
Throughout the year 2008 the stock market was slowly spiraling out of control until it
finally collapsed in September. The results were devastating across the country costing 2.4
trillion dollars of American savings. After this crash, accounts of fraud on Wall Street were
unmasked. The biggest of all, being the theft of over 65 billion dollars at the hands of Bernard
Madoff in what is considered now, the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. Madoff was the face of this
crisis because his secrets were uncovered first. Those that did not know him, or invest with him,
