Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 6:17 AM
Modern-Day Hero
Harry Markopolos first had suspicions about Bernard Madoff’s work back in 1999, and pursued the case ever since. Here is the Wall Street Journal’s story.
In early 2000, Mr. Markopolos shared his explosive concerns with Edward Manion, a staff examiner at the SEC’s Boston office. In his documents, Mr. Markopolos said that there’s a chance “I’m an idiot for wasting your time.” But he argued forcefully that “I believe an SEC visit is warranted” to look into Mr. Madoff’s practices.
“This sounds serious,” Mr. Manion told him, inviting Mr. Markopolos in for a meeting.
In May 2000, Mr. Markopolos says he sat down with Mr. Manion and an SEC attorney.
Mr. Markopolos argued his case: A key part of Mr. Madoff’s strategy relied on buying and selling options on the Standard & Poor’s 100-stock index. But Mr. Markopolos said his research showed there weren’t enough S&P-100 options in existence at the time to support Mr. Madoff’s stated strategy, given all the money he seemed to be managing. So something else must be going on.
Mr. Markopolos, a native of Erie, Pa., who had trained in “unconventional warfare,” including intelligence gathering, as a reservist in the Army, says he came to “consider Madoff a domestic enemy.”
What a story – it should be a movie!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122956182184616625.html?mod=mktw
Posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 6:17 AM in Uncategorized | 1 Comment » | 
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WSJ had an article quoting Markopolos 9 years ago flat out stating that Madoff was “running the biggest ponzi scheme in history”.
It just reminds me of all of Tanta’s posts from years back that still have more relevance to today than anything the experts keep putting out.
BDiego | December 18th, 2008 at 2:11 pm