I see the end of article states Madoff may have been doing this since 1970.

If a person invested with him early on they made lots of money.

I wish I could go over his records, all he did was collect up money and hand it back to people.

Its easy to fake an investment report, he just picked the investments after they happened. Unfortunately anyone can do that, fake an investment report each month after the events already occurred.

It all requires a tag, that being if you own the stock it should have your name on it. If you received a report you should be able to validate it, seeking a transaction that had you name on it. Enumerated stocks and buyer ID#

The thing is this is not about stocks, it about collecting capital and then distributing capital. There was not interest there was no return on the investment. What was put in less what was distributed to each contributor. 500M initially at 10% return is 50M a year, in ten years it breaks even, in the eleventh and subsequent years it becomes profit.

Notice all the confusion around it, woman crying babies screaming men killing themselves. All to distract from those involved into the subsequent years they made money. That money part of a felony con, a non-for -profit foundation existed on its trust and supported many. Not operating on returns from investments actually depleting the trust to zero, if they lasted into the subsequent years they actually went beyond the trust and began to spend the funds of others.

Theoretically it could all be put back in place, all the commissions returned and any subsequent funds recovered. If we cannot track the money particularly large sums like this then we have some real problems.

All my money gone…some actually spent it, they spent it on lavish lifestyles in 10% annual increments. If they got into subsequent years can I serve them the legal notice, your asset froze you owe $50M!!!