Blog 19

What is it about today’s society that allows someone to steal $50,000,000,000 and if convicted the perpetrator could receive a 20 year jail sentence and a fine of $5,000,000.

With such big fraud dollar numbers being bandied about in 2008, the enormity of the crimes being committed are being lost in a sea of zeros. So let’s put the little equation above into perspective. $50,000,000,000 (Fifty Billion or Fifty Thousand Millions) is the equivalent of stealing $1,000 from every man, woman and child in a country the size of Great Britain.

What this little equation also tells us is that 'pro-rata' the punishment for stealing a paltry $5,000,000 would be just 18 hours in jail and a fine of $25. 

Now there's an incentive if ever there was one, to join the stealing elite.

December 17 2008
Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, accused of orchestrating a $50 billion ($72 billion) fraud, was placed under house arrest overnight as BNP Paribas became the latest European bank to be sideswiped by the scandal.

A federal judge ordered the 70-year-old former pillar of Wall Street confined to his $US7 million Manhattan apartment and told Mr Madoff's wife to surrender her US passport.

Mr Madoff will be fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and will only be allowed to leave his home for appointments with authorities.

Bernard Madoff's giant Ponzi scheme is bad enough, but what about all the other Bernie M's out there?

And what will the SEC do about it? Well if they missed Bernie M, who turned himself in, what chance do they have of catching anyone else?