[Xymphora] The Madoff money ratline

The following article represents a followup to Roy Belmont on Bernie Madoff.

I have doubts about the conclusion. I argue in Importance of Nuremberg Tribunal Law that the State of Israel serves Jewish social networks and not vice versa.

The Madoff money ratline

The Official Story about Madoff was that he was essentially a lone wolf, taking all these billions from Holocaust Survivors, piling it in a big pile, and making it disappear (we're talking at least $50 billion that still can't be accounted for). Only now is the rest of the story starting to come out. From an article on the death of Jeffry Picower (who at least didn't fall off a tall building; my emphasis in red):

"Picower’s status as a victim began to change last May, when Picard sued Picower for $5 billion of alleged fictitious profits from his Madoff accounts. “In other words,” the complaint states, “Defendants have received, at a minimum, more than five billion dollars of other people’s money.”

This amount is far greater than Madoff’s stated personal net worth, implying that Picower earned more from the Ponzi scheme than Madoff himself.

Picard later increased the amount sought in the suit to $7.2 billion.

Rather than being an unwitting beneficiary of Madoff’s misdeeds, Picard alleges that Picower “knew or should have known” that he was profiting from a fraud. As evidence, Picard offers the exceedingly high annual rates of return earned by the Madoff accounts, averaging 22% and sometimes reaching as high as 950%. “These anomalous and astronomical rates of return… were neither credible nor consistent with legitimate trading activity, and should have caused any reasonable investor to inquire further,” the complaint states.

The trustee points to a number of damning circumstances that he argues should have made clear to Picower that Madoff was engaged in fraud. The filing states that much of the money Picower withdrew came from one specific account with relatively small holdings and little trading activity. Picower took hundreds of millions of dollars from that account each quarter. By December 2008, the account was carrying a negative balance of $6 billion. In a September 30 filing, Picard wrote that this massive negative balance “was clear evidence that something was seriously amiss at BLMIS [Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities]. No legitimate broker-dealer would allow this investor to maintain such a staggering margin balance.”

In the initial complaint, Picard also alleges that Madoff was blatantly backdating fictitious trades in Picower’s accounts to justify the best possible purported returns. In one instance, an account opened in April 2006 was represented in account statements to have made transactions in January 2006, at a time when the securities purportedly purchased were at their lowest prices of the quarter. Elsewhere, Picard accuses Picower of actually directing the backdating on some of the fictitious trades."

and:

"Picower is not the only major Jewish philanthropist who has come under suspicion as the Madoff case unfolds. Beverly Hills, Calif. based money manager Stanley Chais, benefactor of the Chais Family Foundation, which funded Jewish and Israeli causes, has also been the subject of a suit by Picard. Separate suits have been filed against Chais by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the state Attorney General of California and a number of investors in the funds Chais managed that were invested with Madoff.

Picard’s complaint against Chais is similar to the one against Picower, with an added wrinkle. While Picower was investing his own funds and the funds of entities that he controlled, Chais managed three investment funds that had been placed in Madoff accounts. The investors in those funds were unaware that their money was actually being managed by Madoff. Picard alleges that the exorbitantly high rates of return enjoyed by Chais’s family and by corporate accounts constituted payment by Madoff for supplying his scheme with capital through the investment funds. According to the filing, “[T]he substantially higher returns reported on the Chais Family Accounts were a form of compensation by Madoff to Chais for perpetuating the Ponzi scheme by investing and maintaining millions of dollars of other people’s money in BLMIS.”

The filing paints Chais as a close associate of Madoff’s; Chais’s phone number was at the top of a speed dial list found in the offices of Madoff’s firm."

and:

"CFF shut its doors in mid-December 2008, just days after the Madoff story broke. In 2007, the last year for which public records are available, the foundation gave away nearly $11 million in grants. The largest of the grant recipients that year was the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which sponsors projects around the world on behalf of the American Jewish community. Chais has been on the board of the JDC since 1999. In 2007, records show that his foundation donated $1.5 million to the organization. This money went mostly to support education programs in Israel and the former Soviet Union.

None of the JDC projects supported by CFF have been canceled, according to Amir Shaviv, the JDC’s assistant executive vice president for special operations. Chais was insistent that all his projects have multiple funding partners, and in all cases, the other partners have taken up the slack. “None of the programs collapsed, because none of the programs depended solely on his philanthropy,” Shaviv said. “In retrospect, it was a very smart move.”"

What we're seeing is the tip of the iceberg of a network of Jewish 'philanthropists' whose job it was to funnel money into the Madoff organization, and then take the money back out mostly for the purposes of moving it to Israel for Zionist causes. The biggest 'victims' were anything but victims, and the focus on Madoff is an intentional diversion. The reason Bernie owned up so quickly was to protect the network. Picower had probably been talking about doing some sort of deal with the Feds, knew too much, and so had to die to protect the greater Zionist cause.

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