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"In the examination of Madoff, the SEC did not seek records from the Depository Trust Company(DTC)(an independent third-party), but sought copies of such records from Madoff himself..." "Had they sought records from the DTC, there is an excellent chance that they would have uncovered Madoff's Ponzi scheme in 1992." Source: SEC Inspector General

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators fumbled five probes of Bernard Madoff's operations and missed opportunities to uncover the financier's $65 billion investment fraud, a report by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's inspector general said on Wednesday. The SEC received more than ample information over the years to warrant a thorough and comprehensive examination or investigation of Madoff and his firm, the report said.

Securities and Exchange Commission Inspector General David Kotz has issued his long-awaited report on how the agency missed the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. In a statement e-mailed to CNBC Monday afternoon, Kotz said the 450-page report is the result of an exhaustive, eight-month investigation. .....

Does convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard L. Madoff have cancer, as two newspapers are reporting, or not, as the U.S. Bureau of Prisons is stating? Under the headline "Bernie's Cancer Cell," the New York Post reported Monday that Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in prison for swindling investors out of as much as $65 billion, wrote: "Bernie Madoff had little to lose by confessing to masterminding the world's biggest Ponzi scheme -- he's dying of cancer, sources told The Post." The story goes on to say that Madoff, 71, has been telling fellow inmates that he doesn't have long...

Apparently died of pancreatic cancer in prison. Just announced on Coast to Coast.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff has told fellow prison inmates that he is dying of cancer, the New York Post reported Monday, citing unnamed prison sources. Madoff, 71, who since June has been serving a 150-year sentence at a North Carolina federal prison, has been telling inmates that he does not have long to live, the newspaper said, citing the unofficial and unusual sources. One inmate at the Butner (North Carolina) Medium Federal Correctional Institution said Madoff was taking "about 20 pills a day" and "not doing very well," the Post wrote. Federal Bureau of Prisons...

Bernie Madoff had little to lose by confessing to masterminding the world's biggest Ponzi scheme -- he's dying of cancer, sources told The Post. Madoff, who is serving 150 years at a North Carolina federal lockup after pleading guilty to swindling more than $65 billion, has been telling fellow inmates he does not have much longer to live. "He's been taking about 20 pills a day for his cancer," said one inmate. "He talks about it all the time. He's not doing very well." There's been much speculation as to why Madoff took the entire fall for the scheme --...

August 23, 2009 My story, by the mistress of Bernard Madoff Sheryl Weinstein gave her life savings and her love to disgraced financier without realising he was world’s biggest swindler [Pics in URL] For almost three months after Bernie Madoff was arrested, I wandered through life in a mental fog. Day after day, I awoke with a weight on me; this total feeling of dread. Not only do I feel like Bernie stole our money, but he also stole our future dreams, a part of my son’s future, the little money my parents had left me, and the money my...

<p>A new book by Barron’s reporter Erin Arvedlund asserts that banking giant JPMorgan Chase became aware of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme months before his arrest, prompting the bank to liquidate its positions in a Madoff-related fund. Yet, the bank continued to accept deposits into Madoff’s main account at the bank from unsuspecting investors who were about to lose everything.</p>

SNIP A female veteran Madoff employee tells Oppenheimer, "He had affairs in the office. There were two women I know of. They were gorgeous. They were blond. They were young. They were like baby Ruths -- the same type as Ruth, with the same hair color and eye color." A different Madoff insider said, "Ruth told him to stop [playing around], but he started having affairs all over the place," adding that Madoff would often give his girls cards with his private cellphone number on them. SNIP

Ex-Hadassah CFO claims in new book she and Madoff got up-close-and-personalFirst Bernie Madoff had an affair with ex-Hadassah CFO Sheryl Weinstein. And then he took her house. Madoff, a former Nasdaq chairman, is currently serving a 150-year prison term for masterminding the $65 billion Ponzi scheme that cost thousands of people, including Weinstein and her family, their life savings, homes and sense of security. Perhaps the accountant is trying to recoup some of her money by publishing a tell-all book – "Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me." Or maybe she's trying to get back at Bernie by revealing...

In pleading guilty, CFO Frank DiPascali has opened the door to a wider investigation of Bernard Madoff's deedsFrom the start, few believed Bernard Madoff's claim that he acted alone in creating and managing his $65 billion Ponzi scheme. On Aug. 11, in a Manhattan courtroom, that claim was revealed to be just another of Madoff's lies. Madoff's former chief financial officer, Frank DiPascali, pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges relating to his involvement in the scam and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. "I was loyal to him. I ended up being loyal to a terrible, terrible fault," he said in...

HARRY Markopolos -- the whistleblower on Bernie Madoff who proved to be much smarter than the SEC -- says there are evildoers out there who will make the Ponzi scum "look like small-time." Markopolos gave a speech to 400 of the faithful at the Greek Orthodox Church in Southampton and predicted major scandals will soon be revealed about the unregulated, $600 trillion, credit-default swap market.

YOUNG, inexperienced government regulators were so wowed by Bernard Madoff's ritzy Midtown headquarters that they asked about job openings and dropped off resumes while missing clear evidence he was running a massive Ponzi scheme, a new book claims. "No wonder they never found anything," Madoff firm secretary Elaine Solomon told author Andrew Kirtzman for his book, "Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff," The Post's Dan Mangan reports.

Inexperienced govt regulators were wowed by Madoff's ritzy Midtown hdq .....missing clear evidence he was running a massive Ponzi scheme. Madoff firm secretary Elaine Solomon, who worked for Madoff's younger brother, Peter, and who did not know about the fraud, told author Andrew Kirtzman for his book, "Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff." Solomon said the arch-fraudster got anxious every time the SEC came knocking. "But he needn't have worried," Kirtzman writes. The youthful SEC staffers were dazzled to be at Madoff headquarters. When SEC probers showed up at Madoff's office after his arrest, Solomon recognized one from...

On December 9, 2008, $65 billion of investor money was at peace. On the fear-greed seesaw that is said to characterize investor emotion, fear was down on the ground, while greed was high in the sky, having all the fun. Greed was earning a steady 1% per month, making fear look like an over-cautious fool. On December 10, 2008, six simple syllables transformed that greed into lead, sending it crashing to earth while launching fear to the moon. The syllables were these: "It's all just one big lie," and they were spoken by Bernard Madoff. It was an admission that...

Excerpted with permission of publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc "Madoff with the Money," by JERRY OPPENHEIMER. Long before Madoff became Ponzi king, he was scamming his way through Queens and LI, tricking suburban moms into buying overpriced sprinkler systems, inflating his golf score and taking the easy way out at school. HIS PARENTS Bernie Madoff was a born operator who always seemed to know his way around the system, even when he was a young punk growing up in Laurelton, Queens. Schoolboy Bernie was too busy thinking of ways to make money -- an endeavor impressed upon him at...

What's really behind the push in the healthcare bill to limit, by government decree, healthcare options? It's because of the government's medicare Ponzi scheme that makes Bernie Madoff look like just a simple short-game grifter. As Gary North points out, Medicare's hospital fund is already bankrupt: This is taken from a March 25, 2008 press release from the U.S. government's Department of Health and Human Services. This year the HI Trust Fund will spend more than its income, and from 2009 through 2017, about $342 billion will need to be transferred from the Federal treasury to cover beneficiaries' hospital insurance...

Frank DiPascali Jr., long rumored to be cooperating with L/E, is expected to waive indictment and plead guilty, prosecutors wrote a federal judge.....but don't say what crimes he will be charged with. Fortune mag reported DiPascali had "encyclopedic knowledge" of the $65B fraud and would admit creating phony records for major investors for tax purposes. DiPascali was investors main contact -- he answered questions about their accounts and handled their transactions. L/E plans to charge as many as 10 people but only Madoff's accountant has been charged after the seven-month investigation. Madoff insisted he acted alone since the early 1990s,...

The Internal Revenue Service has begun to send refund checks to Madoff investors who paid taxes on money they thought they had made before the massive fraud was revealed. An early trickle of refunds includes checks for substantial amounts, nearly half a million dollars in some cases. The very biggest sums haven’t materialized, however, according to certified public accountants. By some estimates, these could be for tens of millions of dollars. A handful of clients of Robert S. Keebler, a partner at accounting firm Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP in Appleton, Wis., have gotten refunds after filing amended returns since...