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Comments: 280 +- Your Rights Online: Bernie Madoff's Programmers Arrested on Friday November 13, @03:55PM
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ZipK writes "With their former boss cooling his heels on a 150-year sentence, programmers Jerome O'Hara and George Perez are now in the US Attorney's crosshairs. They've been arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy, and 'accused of producing false documents and trading records at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York.' Apparently Madoff's fraud was too large and too complex to be foisted entirely by hand."
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Moral of the story: (Score:4, Insightful)
If you destroy evidence, make sure you destroy the backups, too.
Re:Moral of the story: (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Moral of the story: (Score:5, Funny)
... and when your boss gets 150 years, get your ass to a country without an extradition treaty with the US.
Polanski's corollary: Stay there.
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Re:Moral of the story: (Score:4, Funny)
Popo's corollary: And if you're a far bigger criminal enterprise (cough, Goldman Sachs, cough, JPMC) kick back and laugh as the Justice system locks up the small fry's.
Parent
Re:Alan Johnson is a twat (Score:5, Funny)
any particular kind of metal you'd like the chains made from
Mercury.
Parent
Re:Alan Johnson is a twat (Score:5, Informative)
Very far from true.
The list of countries with no extradition treaties with the US is, more or less:
Afghanistan, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Central African Republic, Chad, China (People's Republic of China), the Union of the Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d' Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Madagascar, the Maldives, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Mauritania, the Federated States of Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Niger, Oman, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé & Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Bhutan, Iran, Taiwan, Korea (North).
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Re:Alan Johnson is a twat (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Alan Johnson is a twat (Score:4, Interesting)
After reading your post I was inspired to wikipedia Andorra. I am a US citizen. Now I want to move to Andorra. Thank you =)
Parent
Re:Alan Johnson is a twat (Score:4, Interesting)
China is nice enough. However, in the case of China, if your country starts telling them that you stole billions of dollars, they're going to deport you for overstaying the visa that they just terminated. If your own country says "we want him back so we can kick his arse", then it is really not worth the effort for the Chinese government to argue with your government about a potential criminal they don't care about anyway. The US has sent Chinese embezzlers back to China, I'd imagine they would repay the favor. In fact, you'd have a very hard time finding a country that will knowingly take in a fugitive unless they can prove that they are a political refugee. Agreeing to repatriate suspects is an easy and popular way to get shady people out of your own country and keep the other country happy. You have never actually needed an extradition treaty to do it. Chinese law prohibits the extradition of Chinese citizens, which means that they will probably be tried by a local court instead, doubtfully a better outcome.
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Re:Moral of the story: (Score:5, Funny)
If you destroy evidence, make sure you destroy the backups, too.
Also, make sure you destroy evidence of your destruction of evidence and backups.
Parent
Re:Moral of the story: (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget to destroy the evidence of your destruction of the evidence of the destruction of the evidence and backups and its backups and its backups.
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Re:Moral of the story: (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget to destroy the evidence of your destruction of the evidence of the destruction of the evidence and backups and its backups and its backups.
This is going to turn into one of two things: A painting of Stephen Colbert, or an episode of Black Adder.
I'm good with either outcome, really.
Parent
Re:Moral of the story: (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the problem is they were sending out statements. Those statements were theoretically based on input from the markets, after the amounts were made bigger by the black box which was Madoff's investment "strategy". Once the black box was determined to be a fraud, the programmers were done, because they implemented the black box. At that point ,no amount of deleting was going to get them out of being implicated.
Parent
Re:Moral of the story: (Score:5, Funny)
Should have used perl.
Parent
But (Score:5, Insightful)
So tell me, when are they going to go after the programmers at Goldman Sachs?
Right after the revolution (Score:3, Insightful)
You realise GS pretty much pwns the US government.
Re:Right after the revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're reading too much into it.
The idea being that a large investment firm, and possibly others and their clients, are all using certain code to help them decide when to execute trades. An unscrupulous third party could use knowledge of that code to place investments that trigger trades by GS, which is large enough to affect the market. In effect manipulating the market by manipulating GS.
The market gets manipulated by the sheer size of GS, and the main loser would be GS, as well, since they're already using their software to maximize their own benefit.
Which brings to mind the issue that the sheer size of GS is the real issue, not the software that they use. Someone here once said, "too big to fail? More like too big to be allowed to exist!" Everyone that received bail-out money should be broken into smaller entities on a staggered basis when the economy recovers.
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Re:Right after the revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Right after the revolution (Score:5, Informative)
> That's 10% 10% barely covers overhead, and employee salaries.
Put simply, Profit = Revenue - Costs.
All overheads, salaries etc ARE costs. So Dell's $1.5b profit on sales of $14b isn't at all bad at all. It's very good.
What you're talking about is margin - the difference between the cost price of something and the sale price. The figure of "30%" is a generally accepted minimum margin for a business. I think it's based on a reseller. If you buy a box of paper in at $10, then you should have to sell it for $15 (plus tax if applicable) in order to survive. That $5 should cover all of your costs, with a little left over for profit.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What you're talking about is margin - the difference between the cost price of something and the sale price. The figure of "30%" is a generally accepted minimum margin for a business.
It depends - enormously - on turnover.
If you turn over your inventory (on the average) in a week or less, like a grocery store, a 1% profit comes out to over 50% in a year (and that's not counting compounding). This is why grocery stores are VERY sensitive to shoplifting and spoilage costs.
If you turn over your inventory in a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be worth it to work there, but solely as a return on investment, no it is not "worth it". There are numerous other items that could be invested in (bonds, real estate, commodities) that offer far better that a 1% return with far lower risk.
So no, it isn't worth it if you believe the sole function of a company is to generate profit. Thankfully there are a
Re:Right after the revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate articles filled with lies.
Buffet routinely lobbied against the bailout legislation.
Buffet did lobby for bailouts of a different nature, in which the government would get voting stock in the companies they bailed out, there were clear stipulations on where money was spent (so it didn't go into pockets like his), and there was massive accountability.
When Buffet bailed out GE, he laid out such a framework and encouraged the government to follow suit. And while Buffet has a high personal worth because of stock he owns, he has always been know to live frugally, and is now giving away the massive bulk of his wealth.
However Buffet is a known conservative, so a liberally-slanted website is all but obligated to go on a character assassination for no good reason. (I'm neither Republican nor Democrat. I just hate lying. If anything, I support true liberalism, in which there is less government restriction period, and personal liberties are protected as much as possible).
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Re:Right after the revolution (Score:5, Interesting)
Buffet routinely lobbied against the bailout legislation.
Buffet is a smart man. And everyone was against the bailout legislation. Except of course those to be bailed out, and the Pelosi inspired politicians.
I still remember the reports when it was first mentioned. "All my constituents aren't saying "No", they're saying "HELL NO!"". All that got swept under a pile of money however.
It's curious for me that, living in Costa Rica, the US dollar has plummeted against our local currency - to the point where a can of Coke is now twice as expensive here versus in the US (due to local inflation continuing despite our currency appreciating against the dollar). I think soon US citizens won't be able to afford to travel outside the US. It's a real pain in the ass for me, because I earn in dollars, so I'm becoming relatively poorer too compared to my wife who earns in local currency. We're talking 10-15% poorer in the past 3 months alone. Running the money printing presses in the US has everything to do with this. But no one listened to Ludwig von Mises [wsj.com] the first time, anyway.
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Re:Right after the revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, Buffett did benefit from the bailouts... Not to mention Buffett recently tried to back Goldman's recent proposal to buy tax credits from Fannie Mae [ritholtz.com]. He's not the boogeyman, but he's not the nice, friendly man with a sincere belief in capitalism that he is sometimes made out to be.
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Re:Right after the revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
The conservatives have spent how much on two wars? An honestly reported Defense budget, where costs such as medical care for wounded vets aren't shuffled over to HEW, makes military spending well more than 50% of the total. You could completely close all federal programs except prisons, war on drugs and defense, privatize everything there that you could, and you still have an incredibly bloated federal government at zero % liberalism.
And it was conservatives that rushed through the biggest single spending program ever, a bank bailout with no strings attached. The 'liberals' have spent less on this, taken more time for rational debate, and demanded more accountability. (And still ended up giving away our money to parasites and freeloaders, but at least at a slightly lower rate than your beloved conservatives).
You do know, don't you, that it's conservative drug war policy that drives over 90% of our foreign aid to South and Central America? See, when we give Colombia modern troop transport helicopters for anti-drug use, we have complaints from their neighbors that those choppers could be used for other activities, such as a nice little invasion, so we give the neighbors aid to buy more military hardware too, whether they have the same drug problems or not, until there's a balance of power restored. It's conservative mandated spending, and really spending driven by the DEA, but it gets blamed on the 'liberals', since it goes on the books as foreign aid, and 'everyone knows' that's them bleeding heart do-gooder types.
Education? No Child Left Behind is a conservative program. How much did it add to government controls and the tax and spend mentality? Has it worked?
Why are there now 17 federal agencies where there are firearms carrying agents (and yes that excludes the military)? Are liberals the ones giving out more guns to BATF, DEA, Dept. of the Interior, and so on, and how does that fit with getting government out of our lives?
Parent
Re:Incorrect. (Score:4, Insightful)
Liberals want to be liberal with conservative's money, and conservative with liberal's money.
Conservatives want to be conservative with conservative's money, and liberal with liberal's money.
Every "class" or group wants to spend more of other peoples' money, and less of their own, and they all have rationalizations to justify their individual positions.
Me, I'm a true egalitarian - I want to spend EVERYONE's money! :-p
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
That's easy: when there is evidence that they committed a crime.
Goldman Sachs's behavior is probably completely legal (that doesn't mean it's morally right, just legal). Also, it's extremely unlikely that programmers working in the bowels of the big investment banks (GS, MS, BoA) are in on any lawbreaking that does occur.
It seems like these guys made several stupid mistakes:
- Being loyal to Madoff et al once they knew what was going on.
- Being willing to lie to the FBI and/or SEC.
- Taking big bonuses to keep their mouth shut.
- Staying in the country after the house of cards fell apart.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when was it a crime to be the exclusive market maker in CDS, after your two major competitors go out of business, giving you a completely risk-free profit on bit-ask spreads?
Since when was it a crime to upgrade a company whose stock offering you are underwriting?
Re:But (Score:4, Informative)
THIS
The SEC had been tipped off on this scam at least three years before it "surfaced."
Parent
Re:But (Score:5, Informative)
perhaps some programmers were in on the fact that it was a scam
FTFA:
[according to the prosecutor] The computer codes and random algorithms they allegedly designed served to deceive investors and regulators and concealed Madoff's crimes
At one point they tried to cover their tracks by erasing files, but did an incomplete job.
After that, the SEC said DiPascali convinced the programmers to modify programs so that he and other employees could create [fake] reports themselves.
... which indicates that although they might have been bothered by what they were doing, they weren't bothered enough to quit,or call in the Feds themselves, or take any other redeeming action.
Granted, they're innocent until proven guilty, etc., but it appears they were in this up to their ears.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand Madoff would provide quarterly statements showing a more-or-less constant rate of return, listing fictitious trades that would justify the rate of return, using knowledge of actual prices in the past quarter to get the numbers to come out just right (which is easy enough in hindsight). I'm all for presuming these guys innocent, but I think your outr
Re:But (Score:5, Interesting)
The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest
Ah yes. A great Biblical scholar. All Biblical scholars know that Jesus definitely was trying to protect self-interest. So was Paul, when he said
Philippians 2:3 (New International Version)
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
And Jesus when He talked about being meek, humble, lowly, generous, forgiving, feeding the poor, clothing the naked. And the rest of the Bible when it talks about humility, that God hates the pride, that God "sides" with the humble, that God resists the proud, that God sees the poor and needy, that God judges the unjust - especially when they are rich and they unjustly treat the poor ...
Definitely "an endorsement of self-interest." Frankly, I would guess that Griffiths has never read the Bible but pulled that quote from somewhere because he was in St. Paul's Cathedral and thus wanted to appear religious in some way. To most people that actually have read the Bible and even more so to people that believe it, he only comes off as being ignorant and just using the words of Jesus to excuse his own selfishness and greed (also talked about in the Bible in quite condemning terms). Not sure that's what he meant to do.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
it is clear that their high-speed trading is effectively a zero sum game and by enriching themselves, they are not providing greater prosperity for others.
So long as I can still make money day trading on the stock market, I don't care. And I CAN still make money.
The high speed trading provides liquidity. I need someone to buy stock from me or sell stock to me. Without these traders, I'd place a bid/ask and wait. And wait. And wait. And maybe I'd get my price. Mayb
Another case of bad parenting? (Score:4, Interesting)
I always tell my kids that "so-and-so made me do it" is no defense. And I'm sure nearly every parent has taught their children that for generations. I hope these guys roast for not listening to their parents!
Re:Another case of bad parenting? (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean "a good father?"
Parent
crontab (Score:5, Funny)
And that's why we have cellscripts and conjobs
What's the motivation? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are so many great opportunities out there for making a legitimate living programming that it makes me wonder why these guys volunteered to spend the best years of their lives stealing from people.
Something like this, they'd have to be paid a lot better than what they could make legitimately.
Re:What's the motivation? (Score:4, Informative)
Madoff told DiPascali to pay the programmers "whatever they wanted in order to keep them happy," the investigators said, and the programmers received pay increases of about 25 percent and net bonuses of about $60,000.
Pay increase of 25% above what was probably already a good salary and a bonus that alone matches or exceeds what a lot of programmers make in a year.
Parent
Re:What's the motivation? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're a computer programmer, in your mid 40s. Finding work is difficult for a programmer after 40, every one around you is becoming stinking rich, law enforcement seems to not pay attention when things go well, you have kids in college, and you boss is pressuring.
Every day you go in and deal with these people, everyday they lie and cut corners and get rich without any legal issues.
What they did was wrong, but I can certainly understand why they did it, and I can't say for 100% I wouldn't have done the same thing. I like to think I wouldn't, but still.
Parent
Well, of course. (Score:5, Informative)
If you've followed the details of the Madoff scandal, it was obvious that it required substantial computer support.
Each month, Madoff's investors got statements which showed fictitious trades and fictitious profits. The phony trades were for real stocks, with prices which were (almost) real. But the trades were chosen retrospectively, which is like betting on a race after it's run. So superficially reasonable statements came out. This was all generated on an AS-400 that had been in use for this for several decades.
The software wasn't very good. If they'd been better at it, they could have generated statements which showed trades which exactly matched real trades of others (from the "tape"; trades are public but traders are anonymous), delivered trade confirmations every day, and still shown phony profits just by picking trades randomly distributed around the 75% of each day's trades. That would survive external examination, but not a real audit. Close looks at Madoff statements show trades which could not possibly have occurred; the price is outside the day's trading range. Sloppy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you've followed the details of the Madoff scandal, it was obvious that it required substantial computer support.
Each month, Madoff's investors got statements which showed fictitious trades and fictitious profits. The phony trades were for real stocks, with prices which were (almost) real. But the trades were chosen retrospectively, which is like betting on a race after it's run. So superficially reasonable statements came out.
This was all generated on an AS-400 that had been in use for this for several decades.
The software wasn't very good. If they'd been better at it, they could have generated statements which showed trades which exactly matched real trades of others (from the "tape"; trades are public but traders are anonymous), delivered trade confirmations every day, and still shown phony profits just by picking trades randomly distributed around the 75% of each day's trades. That would survive external examination, but not a real audit. Close looks at Madoff statements show trades which could not possibly have occurred; the price is outside the day's trading range. Sloppy.
YOUR HIRED!
your friendly Goldman Sachs recruiter,
Beelzebub
interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I went to an engineering school that was founded in the aftermath of WW2, so had a strong ethos of: "scientists and engineers need to understand what we're doing and why, not just implement stuff other people tell us to". I.e., don't assume the people above you are in charge of the "why" and as the scientist/engineer all you need to care about is the "how". Usually it's seen as more of an ethics thing, but interesting to be reminded that on occasion it can be a matter of self-interest, too, since you have a legal responsibility to know what you're doing and why, at least to some minimum degree.
The REAL lesson of this. (Score:3, Funny)
When you are a little fish . . . run to your lawyer, then together make yourselves the very best friends that the FBI ever had.
Re:The REAL lesson of this. (Score:4, Informative)
When you are a little fish . . . run to your lawyer, then together make yourselves the very best friends that the FBI ever had.
Yes, run. It is official Justice Department policy that only the first conspirator [justice.gov] to report a criminal conspiracy gets off:. "(the) Division frequently encounters situations where a company approaches the government within days, and in some cases less than one business day, after one of its co-conspirators has secured its position as first in line for amnesty. Of course, only the first company to qualify receives amnesty. "
Parent
Have they not seen Office Space? (Score:3, Funny)
I hope they enjoy their stay at Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison.
"Bernie Madoff's Programmers Arrested"???... (Score:5, Funny)
And this, boys and girls.... (Score:3, Funny)
What about his banker, Chase? (Score:4, Informative)