JoeClarke.Net

A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent

I hope this is not taken as a mere anti Jewish diatribe, but as an example of what the law calls "affinity fraud."

The Security and Exchange Commission gives Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme this very title according to their definition - "Affinity fraud refers to investment scams that prey upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, the elderly, or professional groups."

Mr. Madoff has admitted to magically causing up to 50 billion dollars of feeder/hedge fund money to disappear after promising investors such as friends, relatives, (like Tremont Group Holdings and Fairfield Greenwich Group), Jewish charities, and, especially golf club members, unbelievable profits up to twenty percent per year.

According to Canada's Chronicle Herald

His most loyal customers were wealthy Jews who divided their time between Manhattan and Florida. Some, it was said, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to maintain memberships at the Palm Beach Country Club just in the hope of gaining an introduction to this Wall Street wonder boy.

Bernie was most charitable in his giving $238,000.000 to Democrats, but several Jewish trusts have closed due to Bernie's love of giving to himself. The 1 billion dollar Picower fund has had to close down due to Madoff's madness. Just last week a Democrat relative of mine was telling me how he "could not forget that Republican scammer, Kenneth Lay and company," who was responsible for, as I remember, extorting only a half billion dollars via "accounting errors" - very small potatoes, or latkes, compared to old Bernie.

Finally and most unfortunately, another Jewish mishpocha, Jonathan Sokobin, in charge of such SEC investigations, refused to investigate Bernie Madoff depsite warnings for ten years.

From Grennwichtime.Com - Early this year, Markopolos made one last major effort after receiving an email from Jonathan Sokobin, an official in the SEC's Washington, D.C., office whose job was to search for big market risks. Sokobin had heard about Markopolos and asked him to give him a call, according to an email exchange between them. With low expectations, Markopolos got in touch.
"The way I figured it," he says, "if they didn't believe you at $5 billion, and not at $10 billion, they didn't believe you at $30 billion, then why would they believe you at $50 billion?" Markopolos also sent Sokobin an email - with the stark subject line "$30 billion Equity Derivative Hedge Fund Fraud in New York" - saying an unnamed Wall Street pro recently pulled money from Madoff's
firm after trying to confirm trades supposedly done in his account, but discovering that no such trades had been made. It was his last try. He never heard back about his allegations regarding Madoff.
"I felt pretty low," Markopolos recalls.

Finally, finally, where is the money?