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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, December 26, 2008

Still a mystery how $50 billion vanished from Madoff's hands

By Rachel Beck
Associated Press

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Bernard Madoff's yachts and luxury homes — including this one in Palm Beach, Fla. — are worth millions, but only a drop in the bucket in explaining where he might have spent the missing $50 billion.

Associated Press

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NEW YORK — It has become the biggest mystery to emerge from the $50 billion Bernard Madoff scandal: Where did all the money go?

Federal investigators are likely to take months trying to answer that question as they dig through the disgraced investor's records and attempt to unravel what may be the biggest financial fraud in history.

But several theories are being discussed among financial experts and at Wall Street watercoolers, Palm Beach country clubs and the offices of university accounting professors.

Among the theories: Madoff lost a bundle in bad investments; paid some of the money out to investors; stashed cash in foreign banks; and spent some on his lavish lifestyle. There is also the possibility he inflated his claim of $50 billion in losses.

Madoff, 70, a former Nasdaq stock market chairman, has become one of the most vilified people in America since news broke Dec. 11 that he allegedly had been running a giant ponzi scheme, paying returns to certain investors out of the principal received from others.

The scam included a global roster of investors, from retirees on Long Island to the International Olympic Committee and charities worldwide. So far, investors have said that they have lost more than $30 billion, according to an Associated Press calculation.

Some possible scenarios:

  • Traded away: What's unclear at this point of the investigation is when the scheme began, but reports indicate it had been going on for decades. According to the criminal complaint against Madoff, he told investigators that he "had personally traded and lost money for institutional clients, and that it was all his fault."

    That suggests he may have blown investors' money through a failed trading strategy, and at some point felt compelled to cover up the mistakes.

  • Lost in the financial meltdown: Madoff's scheme was partly undone by this year's crisis in the stock and credit markets. The Dow has lost nearly 36 percent since the start of this year, and the credit market has largely been frozen.

    So investors getting battered in the markets might have withdrawn their Madoff investments because they needed the money.

    It is unclear how much Madoff paid out to investors, but when things came crashing down, just $200 million to $300 million was left in the pot. Authorities say he intended to pay out that money to employees and friends before the alleged fraud was discovered.

  • Went toward the lifestyle: Madoff could have spent some of the money on his lifestyle, which included multiple homes and yachts and memberships at some of the nation's most prestigious country clubs.

    His three U.S. homes — a Manhattan penthouse, a Hamptons beachfront mansion and a home in Palm Beach, Fla. — together have an estimated market value of more than $30 million.

    There is also speculation that the money could show up in other spots — maybe in offshore bank accounts, in family members' names or elsewhere.

    J. Boyd Page, a partner at the Atlanta law firm Page Perry who has represented clients in previous ponzi scheme cases, noted that a good portion of Madoff's business was done internationally, and said some of the money could have been moved there.

  • Went into investors' pockets: While many of investors lost everything, some of them must have received payouts from Madoff over the years. Madoff had to keep up his credibility by allowing people to tap their cash when they wanted.