If you can't trust a former chairman of Nasdaq, who can you trust? No one, it would seem, because if you trusted Bernard L. Madoff, you were taken for a ride.
It was "all just one big lie..., a giant Ponzi scheme" Mr. Madoff said. A $50 billion Ponzi scheme, to be more precise.
The house of cards came tumbling down when some investors wanted their money. Of course, there was no money there, and Mr. Madoff was rumbled. Managed to pull off the biggest scam Wall Street has ever seen, so there's something to hang his hat on while he's sitting in a posh minimum security prison.
Dublin-based Pioneer Alternative Investments ran a fund that was sunk entirely in Madoff's care, which means that the parent company is going to have some explaining to do to the people who entrusted their money to Pioneer Investments. Perhaps as much as 5 billion euros, which is a sizeable loss to make up.
A billion here, ten billion there, and the next thing you know, it's gone. Some, in the classic Ponzi scheme, went to pay dividends to the early suckers, and no doubt Mr. Madoff took his slice of the pie, leaving not so much as a crumb for those who came on board later.
All those hedge funds, up the flue. Who's going to bail them out?
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