Thaindian News

By Gina Gomez
June 21, (THAINDIAN NEWS) CBS’s investigative news magazine “60 Minutes” looked into the infamous Ponzi scheme with Bernie Madoff as the mastermind in an episode that was aired last night. Large number of viewers had turned up to watch the latest episode of the news magazine as it went on to unravel many interesting revelations about the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

In the latest episode of “60 Minutes,” the viewers got the opportunity to meet Irving Picard, the liquidator who has been appointed by the court to undertake the uphill task of recovering the money of the victims of the fraud and return it to them as much as possible. As “60 Minutes” correspondent Morley Safer went into the details of the Bernie Madoff scam through an interview with Irving Picard and his chief counsel David Sheehan, it provided the viewers a better understanding of the legal battle with regard to the scheme.

The episode revealed that the statement that were sent to the investors by Bernie Madoff just prior to the breakdown, were total lies as the $64.8 Billion dollars that the investors presumed they had was nothing but a trick. It also came to light that the total amount of money that went into the scheme was to the tune of $36 billion while a whopping $18 billion went into the scheme prior to the collapse. Interestingly, the $18 billion is still said to be somewhere out there which Irving Picard and his team is attempting to recover for the last 18 months.

In the year 2009, Bernie Madoff was pleaded guilty to as many as eleven federal crimes after he accepted that he had transformed his wealth management firm into a Ponzi scheme. The same year he received a prison sentence of 150 years.