A long-time employee of mega-swindler Bernie Madoff who turned government informant in 2009 has agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors. This marks the final prosecution in the more than six-year long Bernie Madoff case, who first admitted to his gigantic fraud back in late 2008.
Irwin Lipkin, 77, agreed he owes the government a Rolex watch, a well-known painting by Red Skelton and $170 billion cash on Monday, and was sentenced to six months in jail Wednesday on charges of conspiracy and making false statements in employment records. More in the Wall Street Journal [...]

A long-time employee of mega-swindler Bernie Madoff who turned government informant in 2009 has agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors. This marks the final prosecution in the more than six-year long Bernie Madoff case, who first admitted to his gigantic fraud back in late 2008. Irwin Lipkin, 77, agreed he owes the government a Rolex watch, a well-known painting by Red Skelton and $170 billion cash on Monday, and was sentenced to six months in jail Wednesday on charges of conspiracy and making false statements in employment records. More on ValueWalk [...]

Is this finally, at long last, the end of the Bernie Madoff saga? The last of Bernie’s employees who were charged with helping to perpetuate his giant scam was sentenced Wednesday in New York. Irwin Lipkin, who began working Bernard L. Madoff Securities in 1964 and was the firm’s comptroller when he left in 1998, was charged with falsifying records. More in the Palm Beach Daily News [...]

Publicly traded companies will have to disclose the pay ratios of their CEOs and the median pay of their workforce thanks to a split vote by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday. SEC chairwoman Mary Jo White said the regulator had no option other than to pass the rule, which passed in a 3-2 vote, with the two Republican commissioners voting against. The commission was tasked with enforcing a number of provisions contained within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act, which marked its five-year anniversary in July, including the pay-ratio rule. “It is the law and we are required to carry it out,” White said. More in the Guardian [...]

The ponzi scheme carried out by Bernie Madoff and members of his staff, is the subject of a book, authored by Erin Arvedlund, called, “Too Good To Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff.” Arvedlund, a guest on the WNPV Program, Regarding Your Money, says ponzi schemes are still happening. “Malcolm Segal, he was just charged with swindling people out of money due to unusually high rates of return. You can do a check on your broker on Brokercheck.org” More on WPNV [...]

U.S. regulators called on top exchange officials two years ago to strengthen the plumbing that underpins the stock market after a series of trading disruptions. The exchanges did an analysis and concluded they needed a backup plan for the crucial 15-minute closing auction each day when traders are guaranteed they’ll get the final price. Yet when the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading for hours on Wednesday, there were unanswered questions. More on Bloomberg [...]

The New York Stock Exchange ground to a halt for nearly four hours Wednesday because of what officials said was a technical glitch, spooking investors and raising new worries about the soundness of the world’s complex financial markets. The nation’s oldest exchange went dark from 11:32 a.m. to 3:10 p.m., its longest computer-related closure to date, freezing orders and redirecting trades through a sprawling network of other exchanges. But the outage, the latest in a series of alarming glitches since the turbulent 2010 “flash crash,” has led to new questions about weaknesses in the technical underpinnings of some of the world’s most critical exchanges. More in the Washington Post [...]

European victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme can’t directly sue custodian banks such as UBS Group AG, Luxembourg’s highest court said. Luxembourg’s Cour de Cassation, in a ruling Thursday, upheld a 2010 decision by a lower court that blocked hundreds of individual claims by investors, telling them they had to rely instead on liquidators’ efforts to recover lost funds. More on Bloomberg Business [...]

The fiduciary debate is dominating the political agenda in the financial advisory world, but it isn’t the only unsettled business in the industry. An equally important issue is making sure that fiduciary investment advisors—who are required to always act in the best interests of their clients—are actually doing that. More on CNBC [...]

Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied two petitions for certiorari filed by Irving H. Picard—the Trustee for the estate of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (“Madoff Securities”)—and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (“SIPC”). Specifically, the Trustee and SIPC sought review of the Second Circuit’s holding that Bankruptcy Code Section 546(e) bars the Trustee’s attempts to recover innocent investor withdrawals from Madoff Securities made more than two years before Madoff Securities’ liquidation. Picard, Irving H. v. Ida Fishman Revocable, et al. (14-1129); Securities Investor Prot. Corp. v. Ida Fishman Revocable, et al. (14-1128). The Trustee has stated that the application of Section 546(e) will prevent him from recovering more than $4 billion from innocent customers of Madoff (i.e., investors with no knowledge of Madoff’s fraudulent scheme). More on JDSupra Business Advisor [...]