Bernie Madoff's Fraudulent Financial Activities

Bernie Madoff's Fraud

The United States economy has experienced tremendous challenges related to financial practices including illegal fiscal activities and practices. An example of an illegitimate financial activity that hurts the country's economy is Ponzi schemes and other fraudulent activities. The largest Ponzi scheme yet was orchestrated by Bernie Madoff whose fraudulent mechanism crossed several continents. Bernie Madoff's scheme is regarded as the largest one yet since it took something bigger larger than the scheme to bring it to an end i.e. The 2008 global economic recession. Bernie Madoff's success in conducting the fraud provides insights regarding the operations of Ponzi schemes, human nature, and the role of regulatory agencies in preventing and dealing with fraudulent financial activities.

A Ponzi scheme is basically defined as a financial investment strategy that promises large returns to investors. However, the scheme differs from valid investment strategies on the promise that payment to investors is made through recruiting new investors whose capital is used to pay older investors. While it is relatively unclear and poorly documented, Madoff's Ponzi scheme started off small through collecting money from local investments such as charity events and country clubs. Since he was a renowned investor with relatively magic returns, investors would gather in Madoff's local establishments to seek for advice regarding their investments. In the process, the investors eventually entrusted him with their savings, which in turn acted as principal he required for ongoing operation of his Ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff was able to conduct his fraudulent financial activities through his local establishments that fed his huge empire. Moreover, he used several people to encourage potential clients to invest in a highly profitable but anonymous man and business venture with the capability of generating high returns (Michael, 2013).

Madoff's ability to conduct the fraud not only demonstrates the difficulties regulatory agencies experience in preventing and dealing with such frauds but also provides lots of insights regarding human nature. This fraud shows that humans are sometimes driven by greed to generate high returns without hard work. Madoff's clients were individuals who wanted to make more money or profits without hard work in order to satisfy their greed. When humans are driven by greed, they do not examine the pros and cons of available opportunities. Therefore, greed hinders the ability of human to make logical evaluations and sound judgments of available opportunities, especially financial services.

As previously mentioned, Madoff's fraud provides important information regarding the role of regulatory agencies and reasons for failure to detect the fraud. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission is mandated with the task of protecting investors, promoting capital formation, and maintaining orderly, fair, and efficient markets ("The Role of the SEC," n.d.). Bernie Madoff's fraudulent activities demonstrate one of the ways in which the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to play its role in protecting investors and ensuring orderly, efficient, and fair markets. Actually, this regulatory agency failed to detect the fraud because it was relatively and aggressively clueless of some financial activities in the country. Secondly, the failure to detect and prevent the fraud is attributed to the reluctance and failure to act on information it received from investigators before the fraud started. Actually, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has a poor record with whistleblowers and acting on information to prevent some crimes (Taibbi, 2013).