http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Money/Story/STIStory_349396.html
MADOFF'S thousands of victims included individuals, trusts, pension funds, hedge funds and nonprofit organisations. The scheme wiped out people's life savings, ruined charities and foundations, and apparently pushed at least two investors to commit suicide.
Investors big and small were swindled, from Florida retirees to celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax. Many of Madoff's victims were Jews and Jewish charities, which trusted him because he is Jewish. Those cheated included Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
In court Thursday, Madoff - a dapper figure, dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, with swept-back, wavy gray hair - said he began the scheme during the last recession, when 'I felt compelled to satisfy my clients' expectations, at any cost.' He did not put his investors' money into the market, as he claimed. Instead, it was a Ponzi scheme, or a pyramid, in which early investors are paid off with money taken in from later ones.
'When I began the Ponzi scheme I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme,' he said. 'However, this proved difficult, and ultimately impossible, and as the years went by I realized that my arrest and this day would inevitably come.' In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: 'The president is glad that swift justice will happen.' Mr Gibbs said the Obama administration will do everything possible to ensure strict enforcement of securities regulations 'and hope that through those actions that that kind of greed and irresponsibility and that kind of criminal activity never happens again.' Before the court hearing, helicopters circled above the courthouse, and federal officers with automatic weapons stood outside. Investors signed in before entering the courtroom.
The scandal turned a well-respected investment professional - Madoff was once chairman of the Nasdaq exchange - into a symbol of Wall Street greed amid the economic meltdown. The public fury toward him was so great that he was known to wear a bulletproof vest to court.
Afterward, Burt Ross, a lawyer from Englewood, New Jersey, who lost US$5 million in Madoff's swindle, said: 'It's a little bit like seeing the devil.'
jon stewart: "madoff's victims include nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor elie wiesel and as well as kevin bacon. so if madoff has accomplished nothing else, he has now connected kevin bacon to hitler, in only two degrees"
AND. i cannot tell you HOW SHIOK THIS IS
LIVERPOOL THRASH UTD. HAHAHAHHAHAHA. IT WAS A MASSACRE. HAHAHAHA.
okay i didn't watch the match. and i don't have a special liking for liverpool. but i've said it before and i'll say it again, i'll support whoever plays against utd, and if they win, i'm a fan. HAHAHHA.
HAHAH SUCKIT MANCHESTER UTD.