Danny Schechter - ColdType

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His phrase was “indeed, criminal,” and it was uttered in
open court in the Spring of 2009 by the Arch financial
fraudster Bernard Madoff after he confessed to running
an illegal Ponzi scheme.
“I knew what I was doing was wrong, indeed criminal,” was
the whole statement. (Later his CFO, Frank DiPascali would
confess to another federal judge, “I knew it was criminal, and
I did it anyway,” He pled guilty to 10 felony counts, including
conspiracy and tax evasion.)
For his candor and his chutzpah, this market genius credited
with popularizing computer trading and chairing the NAS-
DAQ exchange, will be spending the rest of his life behind bars
as one more example of a big man taking a hard fall, as well
as a symbol of all financial crisis crime, even if Madoff was not
really connected to the crimes that shattered our economy.
Some of the details of how Madoff ’s firm operated came out
in Frank DiPascali’s testimony. The New York Times reported
that “he and unidentified others helped Mr. Madoff perpetuate
the crime – using historical stock data from the Internet
to create fake trade blotters, sending out fraudulent account
statements to clients and arranging wire transfers between Mr.
Madoff ’s London and New York offices to create the impression
that the firm was earning commissions from stock trades.”
The SEC complaint alleged, “DiPascali helped generate
bogus annual returns of 10 to 17 percent by fabricating backdated
and fictitious trades that never occurred. The SEC further
alleges that DiPascali helped Madoff cover up the fraud
by preparing fake trade blotters, stock records, customer confirmations,
Depository Trust Corporation (DTC) reports and
other phantom books and records to substantiate the nonexistent
trading.
“DiPascali and Madoff ran an extraordinary and massive
counterfeiting operation that concealed their fraud from investors
and regulators alike,” said Robert Khuzami, Director of