Madoff: Greed over Ethics?
Bernard Lawrence Madoff is a former American stockbroker, investment advisor and financier that surprised the world of finance when it was uncovered that he had been operating the largest Ponzi scheme in history for near two decades. The fraud worth approximately 65 billion dollars ruined the lives of many who had trusted Madoff with their money and admired him as successful, charismatic, smart and exceptionally good at his job. Some even considered him as a hero, including his employees and his sons who strived to please him.
Bernie was born in 1938 in Queens, New York. He attended University of Alabama which he left a year later and transferred to Hofstra University where he graduated in 1960. Madoff later founded…show more content… However, what he did was to deposit all clients’ funds into a single bank account and used it to pay clients that wanted to cash out. He kept up this scam by attracting new investors using his charisma, reputation and persuasive skills. Bernie could have kept this charade going longer not only because he had the good reputation but mainly because he had people’s trust. They believed in him and paid for it. When the market sharply downwards in 2008, investors were panicking and began cashing out their money, Madoff was unable to keep up the fraud. He confessed to his sons that a branch of his firm was actually a Ponzi scheme. They reported him to the authorities and he was arrested the next day. He pled guilty to 11 felony charges and on June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to a 150 year in…show more content… His normative myopia was largely individualistic the duration of the scheme. Individualism in this case means that Madoff was doing what he did to maximize profit and help make the business successful, however, for himself and his family who also worked for him but not his investors. He was aware of what he was doing and the consequences if he was caught but he kept operating the scheme, in his defence, he claims he wanted to stop but once the wheel was spinning he was trapped and didn’t know how to stop it. He could have turned himself in earlier but he didn’t, he lied to countless people and deliberately stole money from them while still enticing more people to invest with him so he could get more money. The normative myopia is evident, when you take into consideration the bonuses he paid to CEOs and other executive of financial services, proving the extent to which the scheme had forced him to lose his ethics just to maintain his