Madoff with the Money Read Online Free PDF

the authorities.
    Earlier in the year he had claimed in a government filing that he managed $17.1 billion in assets for just 23 clients, which would turn out to be a lie as enormous as his crimes. In fact, as investigators would determine, there were thousands of investors over the years and as much as $65 billion of their money.
    Facing Bernie in his richly appointed apartment, Agent Capiocci said, “We’re here to find out if there’s an innocent explanation” for what had been alleged. Bernie’s response was short and not very sweet. He said, “There is no innocent explanation.” According to Capiocci, “Madoff stated, in substance, that he had personally traded and lost money for institutional clients, and that it was all his fault. Madoff further stated, in substance, that he ‘paid investors with money that wasn’t there’... that he was ‘broke’ and ‘insolvent’ and that he had decided ‘it could not go on’ and that he expected to go to jail.”
    Bernie, the one-time power-broker trader, one of the pioneers of modern Wall Street, a “pillar of finance and charity,” as the New York Times described him, was then placed under arrest—just hours after he celebrated Christmas with his employees. At the FBI’s office, he called his lawyer, Ira Sorkin. “Hi, it’s Bernie, I’ve just been arrested and I’m handcuffed to a chair.”
    At his arraignment that day, wearing a white striped shirt, no tie, and dark gray slacks, he was initially charged with a single count of securities fraud, a charge that would later escalate. For a time he would remain free on $10 million bail and confined to his fancy apartment—home detention with electronic monitoring—a judge’s decision that infuriated Bernie’s victims and raised questions in the public’s mind about the justice system, a system where common criminals without money or reputation are immediately incarcerated for far lesser crimes because they can’t afford to post bail.
    A spokesman for the SEC, which would come under extreme congressional and media criticism for ignoring red flags in the past about Bernie’s criminal activities, called his fraud “stunning” and “of epic proportions,” and the regulatory agency swiftly filed separate civil charges.
    Like a tsunami, the news of the arrest of a Wall Street legend, a former chairman of Nasdaq, a noted Jewish philanthropist, spread quickly. On CNBC, the business channel with the stock crawl that was a daily habit for millions from Wall Street to Main Street, the shocking, mind-boggling news was flashed:
    â€œIf you are working on a trading desk, stop what you are doing for one second before you walk out the door and clean your desk out for the day,” announced anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.
    â€œBernie Madoff has been arrested.”

    By day’s end, the Madoff offices had become a crime scene—invaded by FBI agents, federal prosecutors, probers from the SEC, and forensic accountants who got access to everything—the computers, the laptops, the cell phones, the e-mail.
    Over the next few months into 2009, accounts of the crimes of Bernie Madoff would quickly unfold, and the tragic stories of his victims would become public.
    Desperately seeking to end his controversial house arrest, revoke his $10 million bail, and put him behind bars, prosecutors went to court with startling evidence that Bernie and Ruth had sent some of the fruits of his crimes in secret packages to relatives and friends over the Christmas 2008 holidays. The booty, which was reportedly worth more than $1 million, included gifts to his brother Peter, sons Mark and Andrew, and other relatives. These “swag bags,” according to investigators, ranged from inexpensive $25 cuff links and mittens that cost $200 to eye-popping bling that included diamond-encrusted Cartier and Tiffany