Where did the Madoff money go?

[panader0]

It seems to my uneducated mind that since he was found guilty of bilking people out of 50 billion dollars (or is he guilty yet?)
that the cavalry could just go in and recover the monies and give it back to the bilkees. Where is the money? Hidden in an off-shore account? Swiss banks? Buried in his back yard? And if it was spent, couldn't it still be recovered?

[marylanddem]

1. Just what I have been wondering.

[spanone]

2. good questions...i want to know where the 700 billion is going....that's MY money & yours

[Speck Tater]

3. The basic idea behind a Ponzi scheme

is that earlier investors are paid their returns with money from later investors. The money is gone. Untraceably, irretrievably gone. Spent, eaten up by executive salaries and expenses, gone.

To get it back you'd have to find out which car dealer an exec bought his car from, and then find all the salesmen and auto mechanics the dealer paid wages to with that money, and then go the the McDonald's where the auto mechanic took his family for dinner, and find out who McDonald's paid with that money, and go to the Wal-Mart where the McDonald's fry cook spend his wages on groceries, and find out which Wal-Mart employees got paid with that money and then go to the pharmacy where that Wal-Mart employee bought his blood pressure medicine, and find out who the pharmacy paid wages to with that money, and ...

Hopeless. It's gone.

[TomInTib]

4. I know where it DIDN'T go.

But if I find any of it, I'll let you know.

We'll buy us a bus, go on tour. Play for free, shit like that.

I'm pretty sure I could scrape up some sidemen/women.

[theoldman]

5. Most of the money that was actually invested was lost

as the stocks value disappeared. It other words, it went up into the thin air, gone forever.

[stillcool]

9. then it wouldn't be a Ponzi scheme, would it?

if the idea is to rip people off, I would think that the doer would need to launder that money before investing it anywhere.

[lib2DaBone]

12. That was my question as well....

.. basically, then, the whole friggin stock market is a Ponzi scheme.

[stillcool]

13. I don't think so...stocks have value..

there is something there. A Ponzi scheme..I think.. is like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. There is no there there. I don't know how he could have kept it up for so long.

[Tinksrival]

6. Where did Madoff go?

Has he been arrested? I keep looking for this info in articles but haven't come across it yet? :shrug:

[Double T]

8. Madoff will probably go to 'Ken Lay Heaven' (wink, wink).

Meanwhile on some South Sea Island nobody knows about.......

[stillcool]

10. yeah..I read he got released..

on a million dollar bail. Funny.

[FormerDittoHead]

7. The absolute sickest dimension of the Madoff Fraud...

The absolute sickest dimension of the Madoff Scandal is that, in our capitalist system, such people as Madoff are ALREADY compensated outrageous amounts. Their pay scales are way off any comparative curve, more than doctors, scientists, etc. And yet this SOB still found the need to rip people off.

Arianna Huffington's book, "Pigs at the Trough" (skimpy enough to be a few magazine articles, I wouldn't recommend buying it) has many other similar examples.

[sarcasmo]

11. Swiss bank accounts.

[dysfunctional press]

14. the principle amounts from investors were used to pay "dividends" to investors...

who thought that their accounts were real.