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Markopolos: Madoff's Mob Ties Made Me Fear For My Life
For a while now, there have been suggestions that Bernard Madoff had ties to organized crime. And Harry Markopolos just told Congress that those alleged connections made him fear for his life as a whistleblower working to expose Madoff's scheme.
When a committee member referred to Markopolos' "paranoia" about his safety, he responded by referring to Madoff's "dirty money."
Here's the full quote:
I don't consider it paranoia. And the reason is, Mr. Madoff was running such a large scheme of unimaginable size and complexity, and he had a lot of dirty money. And let me describe dirty money to you. When you're that big and you're that secrective, you're going to attract a lot of organized crime money, and which we now know came from the Russian mob and the Latin American drug cartel, and when you are zeroing out mobsters, you have a lot to fear. And he could not afford to get caught, because once he was caught. And if he would've known my name and knew he had a team tracking him, I didn't think I was long for this world.
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Josh
Zachary
Anyone who thinks there are not vast mountains of dirty money hiding in plain sight is a pollyanna or stupid.
The biggest businesses in the world are human trafficking, illegal drugs and the arms trade. Billions of dollars, billions of euros have to be stashed somewhere.
Guys with that much dirty money can and do get people disappeared all the time.
February 4, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
If I were him I would have feared for my life also, look at the amounts of money Madoff was dealing with, when there is that much money at your disposal you can get someone to disappear. This is especially true when you are dealing with "dirty money".
February 4, 2009 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
frankly, considering the state of american 'justice' these days, it's my sincere hope that the russians/colombians do get an opportunity to see bernie madoff one last time...
February 4, 2009 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm surprised he's not in protective custody.
OTOH, he's obviously a very smart psychopath who's been in this particular world for decades, so he knows the game. It would make sense to let it be known that there are several 'to be delivered in the event of my death' envelopes sitting in his lawyer's office.
February 4, 2009 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've often wondered if the decline of liberalism in this country began with the Kennedy Administrations assault on organized crime, and not so much the outcome of the 1964 election.
Game Theory states that the best strategy for two parties in an on-going interative game is cooperation and civility. The same theory states that the second best strategy is 'tit-for-tat': I punch you in the nose you punch me back. The great thing about "Tit-for-Tat" is that it should lead the two parties back to cooperation and civility: If I want to quit getting punched in the nose, I have to quit punching you in the nose.
Bobby Kennedy's assault destroyed much of the mob and at the very least created a wedge between the mob and the labor movement. Without the mob as a possible coercive force, Economic and Republican elites no longer worried about being punched back after they punched labor in the nose. Increasingly labor lost its traction after that point.
You think someone like Mitch McConnell or Bill Kristol or Rush Limbaugh or Rupert Murdock would carry on in their attack on the middle and working classes if they weren't worried about a brick thrown through their living room window, and their nose or knee caps being broken, or their care detonating or a plane they were flying on suddenly having engine problems and crashing?
I can only imagine what they would do to Ann Coulter.
By the way, it was a plane crash that killed legendary Union organizer Walther Reuther in the early 1970s.
Perhaps there was a place in the world for the mob after all.
February 4, 2009 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know, the CIO unions had their own muscle back in their hey-day, without having to rely on the Mafia (who are nothing if not crony-capitalists anyways). If they need some bricks thrown these days I guess they could always outsource it to some black-bloc types.
February 4, 2009 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink