Odds are, you’ve heard of Bernard Madoff. The once-storied investment manager enjoyed an illustrious career on Wall Street, even serving as the chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange at one point, before his arrest in December 2008 for operating the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Madoff’s victims collectively lost nearly $20 billion, and Madoff is currently serving a 150-year prison term with an expected release date of 2139. While Madoff is undeniably the modern-day face of the Ponzi scheme, many are unaware that the carnage inflicted by his scheme was hardly a one-time event. Unfortunately, the reality is that, while Madoff’s scheme ushered the term “Ponzi scheme” into the mainstream vocabulary (The Associated Press crowned 2009 as “The Year of the Ponzi Scheme”), the true toll of Ponzi schemes is much greater. More in Forbes here.
