# Bernie Madoff Beaten in Jail **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 18, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-madoff-beaten-in-jail/532898 "2010-03-18T15:57:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-madoff-beaten-in-jail/532898/21 "2010-03-19T12:57:02Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > He’s 71. On behalf of the rest of the species, I say fuck him. (Metaphorically.) The guy defrauded thousands of people of their life’s savings and scads of charities of their endowments. Well, sure. Fuck him. I agree. But a lot (and I mean a lot - a significant percentage) of Madoff’s “victims” _knew_ that Madoff was scamming. They weren’t quite sure how, but they knew. Most of them assumed he was trading on inside information, or front-running. A much smaller number suspected that the whole thing was a Ponzi scheme. They didn’t care, though, as long as they continued to show profits. Some got out in time. Many more didn’t. And yes, many were innocent victims. Madoff deserves every day of his sentence. Absolutely. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that many, if not most, of his “victims” weren’t little old ladies losing their meagre retirement funds, they were insanely rich people greedily looking for more easy money, without caring too much (or wanting to know too much) where that easy money came from. What Madoff was up to and how he was doing it had been topics of gossip on Wall Street for years. Being on the fringes of the business, I’d heard it. There was almost nobody in the business who thought Madoff was on the up-and-up, and that includes the managers and advisors who steered clients to Madoff’s funds. Nobody cared, but mostly people with any knowledge of the business hought Madoff was up to no good. > [@Marley23](#): > > If the worst thing that happens to him is spending the last ~ 10 years of his life in a medium security prison and getting his nose broken one time, he’s pretty lucky. If he gets raped or tied to a rock and an eagle comes and eats his liver every day, I’ll have some sympathy. I have a hard time seeing Madoff as the criminal of the century. Believe me, Madoff isn’t the only one. This stuff goes on _every single day_ on Wall Street. It’s still going on. Nobody gives a shit. Not the compliance people at Wall Street firms, not the SEC, not even the investors, unless they’re the ones left holding the bag. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-madoff-beaten-in-jail/532898/22 "2010-03-19T20:31:21Z")
I wouldn’t argue with a single point you made there, **Saintly Loser**. Nobody fools the whole world, and certainly Madoff didn’t. You just have to fool the right people and then let greed or incompetence take care of the rest. There were plenty of other examples of that in the last couple of years, and not just from the Ponzi schemers. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-madoff-beaten-in-jail/532898/23 "2010-03-19T20:37:09Z")
[Dramatic reenactment.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fuDDqU6n4o) “What we’ve got heah is failure to actually invest…”. Whoever beat up the old man is now connected to Kevin Bacon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-madoff-beaten-in-jail/532898.md?page=1)