VLADJ55 / Depositphotos.com
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – I have a friend who caught his wife cheating. He forgave her, and they stayed married for several years after.
But he told me something I’d never thought of before. Every time she is late, every time she isn’t where he expects her to be, every time she’s out for lunch at work… he wonders if she’s being unfaithful again. They eventually broke up. One trust was broken, it never came back.
So today I ask you, what do these people have in common: movie director Steven Spielberg, baseball pitcher Sandy Koufax, Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellie Wiesel, and actor Kevin Bacon. They all lost money to the biggest con-man of all time Bernie Madoff. He was considered beyond reproach; he was the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange. It was a privilege to have him manage your money.
The terms for doing business with him were nothing short of incredible. Investors were not allowed to ask how their money was being invested. There was no prospectus… no lists of assets that his funds controlled. Just put money into the Madoff blind trust, and more money would come out the other end.
Of course, it was a Ponzi scheme. Madoff was giving the money from new investors to the old investors. There were no investments. Just a giant rip-off. Hundreds of charities, university trust funds, even the New York Mets baseball team were swindled.
There’s a lesson in all of this. Who, in this world can you completely trust? ‘No one’ is probably the right answer.
Today is the 17th anniversary of Bernie Madoff’s arrest in the largest swindle of all time… based on trust that was misplaced.
Chris Conley
Comments