The whole Madoff money dilemma.

[WOM]

Exactly. Even a hail-Mary gives you something to think about. Plus he can say that he's old, he's lost both his sons, and his clients have been made reasonably whole in the intervening years. Maybe he catches Trump on a good day.

[ursus arctos]

The biggest obstacle he faces is that he made a number of the president's pals look like chumps.

[Ginger Yellow]

An Israeli binary options executive on trial for her alleged role in a $145 million investment scam took the stand Tuesday to tell a Maryland federal jury that she may have lied to clients about her name and her experience in financial markets, but she never misled investors about the financial product.

This seems like an interesting defence, not least because as I understand it binary options are illegal for retail customers in the US. Seems like misleading investors would have been safer, legally.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Exactly. Even a hail-Mary gives you something to think about. Plus he can say that he's old, he's lost both his sons, and his clients have been made reasonably whole in the intervening years. Maybe he catches Trump on a good day.

There's a reason he got 150 years in prison. Though I can see why he hopes that Trump might be interested in setting a precedent.

[WOM]

As ursus said, he has nothing to lose. He can spend a few hours attempting to secure his freedom or he can read another well-thumbed John Grisham paperback. What would you do?

[WOM]

I might add, I've never read a John Grisham, but that shouldn't impact Mr Madoff's appeal.

[Ginger Yellow]

Part 94 in "GY does not understand the psychology of most investment fraud victims".

This "hedge fund" run out of a dorm room somehow got USD 407m in AUM from 64 investors. To invest in structured notes. What? Even ignoring the fraud part, which is hilarious ("Barnett and Aven concluded that the risk free rate was too low and that using it would yield much lower note values than they wanted. So, they replaced the risk-free rate with the average growth rate for the underlying stock index"), who goes to a hedge fund with 2 and 20 fees to invest in structured notes? Presumably, this sort of people:

In 2010, Barnett – working out of his college dorm room – created SBB along with several Funds under SBB’s management. He then hired Aven as SBB’s first employee.
At first, the Funds were vehicles for investing the Barnett family fortune. Barnett raised hundreds of millions of dollars from friends and relatives (and himself).

What? Who gives their family fortune to a college kid to invest?

Some people deserve to be defrauded, frankly.

[WOM]

I'm with you. If you have a family fortune, your first job is not to lose it. Your second is to match the market before fees. Nothing else. No speculazzi, no startups, no restaurants or nightclubs..

[Ginger Yellow]

Reminded by a story in the FT today that one of Woodford's big investments in the Patient Capital Trust was a cold fusion company. How did he get his (pre-Windhorst) reputation, exactly?

[Ginger Yellow]

The FCA has (temporarily) banned the marketing of unlisted minibonds to retail investors, in the wake of the LC&F fiasco. Long overdue.

[Ginger Yellow]

From an FCA scam warning, this is some classic protesting too much:

Legit-Loan Company / Legit Loan Company

[ursus arctos]

One of Fraud Guaranty's primary targets, I imagine

[WOM]

Y'all see that Bernie Ebbers died the other day? He did a few years behind bars, which is nice...the old crook. Decent that they released him a month ago to die at home.

[ursus arctos]

Yup

He was a pip

[ursus arctos]

[URL="https://twitter.com/reuters/status/1225194689432899586?s=21"]https://twitter.com/reuters/status/1225194689432899586[/URL]

[WOM]

Mmm hmmm. Fuck him.

[ursus arctos]

There are certainly a lot of people here who would agree with you on that

[Ginger Yellow]

One of Fraud Guaranty's primary targets, I imagine

Another one from the Fraud Guaranty school of names:

https://www.fca.org.uk/news/warnings...-myscamadviser

[Ginger Yellow]

The FCA has (temporarily) banned the marketing of unlisted minibonds to retail investors, in the wake of the LC&F fiasco. Long overdue.

Minibond marketing ban now permanent, with some pretty big caveats. This one, in particular, sounds like it could be a recipe for disaster:

products which fund a single UK income-generating property investment

[Ginger Yellow]

Also, looks like the wheels are finally coming off at Wirecard.

[Ginger Yellow]

WiWo lays into the German financial establishment over their response to the FT reporting on Wirecard

[ursus arctos]

He ain't wrong

It took industrial quantities of chutzpah for them to have kept it going this long

EY is having an annus horribilus, too

[Ginger Yellow]

Oh, God yeah. In a sane world this would be their Arthur Andersen moment. I suspect the complicity of the German regulators will shelter them though.

[ursus arctos]

In a saner world, their breakup could seed a number of new firms that could break the oligopoly (or at least increase the numbers), but I can't see that happening.

[Ginger Yellow]

Braun has been arrested. On the other hand, BaFin seems to be trying to pretend not only that it wasn't an active participant in the cover-up, but that it wasn't even responsible for regulating Wirecard.