Monday, December 13, 2010

The Wages of Sin

By now we have all heard that Mark Madoff, son of infamous swindler Bernie Madoff, committed suicide on the second anniversary of his father's arrest.

I would be willing to make a massive bet that Mark Madoff is just another victim, and not a criminal, in this "scam of the century". My bet is the elder Madoff would never have involved his sons, and incompetent or not is not the issue.  It is not illegal to be an incompetent rich kid. I know lots and lots of them, and they don't deserve to end their lives at the end of a dog's leash tied to a pipe. The sins of the father have now been visited on the sons AND grandsons... but we should all take a good, hard look at our criminal justice and tort system. If in the end my contention holds, and that Mark Madoff had no idea what his father was doing, and it turns out that he was driven to suicide... his father AND the prosecution team AND the SEC have all contributed in his murder.

Many may wish to see revenge done upon Bernie Madoff... but killing an innocent man leaves little satisfaction.  I have no love lost for Bernie Madoff. His crimes have left the industry in a shambles and the witch hunt now being conducted by a very egged-faced SEC will likely leave other innocent people's lives in tatters.

A hard truth hit a great many people with this news.  How one conduct's oneself has a great impact upon those closest to them.

"Greed is NOT good."

8 comments:

bureaucrat said...

If Madoff was anything like my parents (born 1938), they would not and have not let me come within 50 miles of the family finances. I have been seen as an incompentent 12 year old for the last 30 years, and I'll bet Madoff was just another "silent generation" dope who did not trust anyone, especially his children. I had to yell and scream (at age 30) to see what was left for me by the grandparents. I'm with Jeffers on this one.

PioneerPreppy said...

Well it has been a while since I read the whole Madoff story but wasn't it his son that turned him in? Or at least tipped them off? Didn't he then get some protection from prosecution because of this?

I could be way off in left field about that as I said but I thought I had read it.

bureaucrat said...

I heard last night he was one of the people who turned him in. However, he's being named in all these lawsuits .. I guess he didn't have THAT much immunity ....

Anonymous said...

My brother was the subject of an investigation. It went on for 2 years and they drove him nuts. He was clean and had the legal backing of big corporation, but it was brutal, none the less. They just do not give up, even when there is nothing to find.

That is my biggest problem with law enforcement. Early on, the pick the perpetrator and then proceed to build a case. At that point, exculpatory evidence is ignored. They focus on getting their man, guilty or not.


Regards,

Coal Guy

K said...

Now that he is dead, he can be blamed even more. His brothers are still being "investigated."

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

Coal Guy:

"Exculpatory evidence is ignored".

It is FAR, FAR worse than that, my friend.

Let me give you an example:

A MAJOR Fortune 500 company had a CEO and CFO go to prison several years ago. A guy whose kid I coached was forced to be a witness via threatening to financially ruin him... anything and everything that did not support the prosecutions "view" of what happened was stricken from his memory banks... in other words, the prosecutors were suborning perjury. This is SOP at the Federal Level where many high profile white collar prosecutions are not the cut and dried stuff of the Madoff case.

Just because the vast majority of the accused are culpable does not excuse this kind of behavior.

Who the hell is watching the watchers?

K said...

Greg:

Most of the time the watchers watch themselves. So in effect no one watches them and they do whatever they think ought to be done, and the standard they use is Preponderance of evidence (real or made) and not, deyond all resonable doubt.

Anonymous said...

Uh. And no one thinks about the most obvious reason this suicide is so well timed ..

A quote from "Sinuhe the Egyptian" by Mika Waltari: "Infant mortality in pharaohs harem is higher than in slums of Thebai. Although no one would believe it were it not backed by the facts, for there is no apparent reason to it."