This is a short TV series which was shown in 4 episodes of about 42mins each. Stars Richard Dreyfuss as Bernie Madoff with other actors whom I am not that familiar except for the one playing his eldest son Mark.
Its based on Bernie Madoff the person exclaimed to run the most notorious scam in history involving Billions of Dollars in a Ponzi scheme. Even he claimed the losses to be in the range of $50 Billion even after paying back most of the "Redemption". The term is for people wanting their money back.
I like watching this type of movie as in involved trading and investments. I know of the character from the papers when he got caught something about running the Ponzi scheme but not in detail. After watching this I found out what was really going on and in a better position to give my view on what did happened.
Bernie runs his company with his family. He had his younger brother as the Chief Compliance Officer, his two sons in the investment department. His nephew and niece is also in the company holding some high position too.
But he also runs another office on the 17th floor of the building headed by his right hand man by the name of Frank. No one is allowed in this floor except the personnel working there, not even his sons. This place runs his shady business, with locked doors and no windows.
What attract people to put money in Madoff's business is his promise to profit their "investment money" by 12% a year. And he didnt charge any management fee for his service either. That attract a lot of investment for him, some with $Billions ! When he got the job as Chairman of Nasdaq his reputation strengthen even further. To the point that he didnt have to find clients for they find him !
So was he able to profit more than 12% a year so that he can give away 12% to his "investors" ? He cannot. Worst - he dare not trade due to his past bad experience in trading the stock market when he was much younger. The fact is, he kept his "investment" in a bank and earn a measly 2% profit a year.
The Ponzi scheme works in this way. Those who fulfilled their investment "period" would be paid back with 12% as commission as promised. So he used the other 10% from the later investment of other investors to come up with the extra (2% from his bank). Surely in the end he would get caught but he thought that would be much later. The market crashed in 2008 and his investors started to doubt Madoff's scheme as his investment was not effected !! In fact he reduced to 5% to cushion the market.
His investors were still worried and they wanted to withdraw their deposits. He managed to fulfilled this by paying the "early birds" "Redemption". But when a majority of his investors were withdrawing, he knew that he would hit the wall sooner than he anticipated. He went on to confess to his family. The unexpected was that his sons were the first one to betray him. Why not as he never told them in the first place. So they quickly went to see their lawyer and confessed to the FBI. On top of that, they cut all ties with their father and give the choice to their mother to choose between them or their father.
One thing about the family, they have some sort of Genetic disorder where a member of the family is highly likely to get cancer, leukemia and anything related.
At the end of the film, Bernie did a Frank Underwood in House of Cards, he spoke directly to the camera in the jail. He said that he ran a ponzi scheme in a bigger ponzi scheme run by the government.Currently he is serving 163 years in jail. His wife didnt care less as she found out that he had an affair with one of his investors.
Mark the elder son committed suicide exactly 2 years after his arrest right to the hour and minutes. His second son died of Leukemia. So did his right hand man Frank died of lung cancer. His nephew died long long before he was arrested.
Now lets ponder - was Bernie that evil cunning enough to be prosecuted by the government ?
Yup he was evil of sort because I can figure out what ever he thought of a "way out". In a Ponzi scheme the bottom lines will get burned. Simple as that. When he is no where near investing his money or whatever means to multiply his funding, no way that he can fulfill his promise to his investors.
Somebody raised the flag much earlier in his funding scheme. Problem is nobody wants to listen and he kept on growing bigger. At one time the SEC (government agency for investing matters) had an audit in his office and they could not find a thing. He was devious enough to create false documents for the auditors to see. One simple phone call could had revealed that he is not trading yet he claimed to trade in millions of dollars. He was expected to be taken down that way, but he didnt.
Good TV series definitely for those who love trading and investing watching the length of 2 movies length in duration . RD might won an award for his role as BM next year. Finally at the end of the series, like most other true stories movie, they show the real character pictures with the actors. One thing for sure actors of this series looked quite similar to the characters they played
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