Analyst who raised alarm about Madoff nine years ago lambasts authorities

Daniel Nasaw in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday
4 February 2009 18.25 GMT


The financial analyst who nine years ago discovered Bernard Madoff's multi-billion dollar alleged fraud scheme today lambasted US securities officials who ignored his warnings, calling for a shakeup of the US securities and exchange commission's structure.


Harry Markopolos, a Massachusetts financial analyst who since 2000 several times sought to alert the SEC to Madoff's fraud, told a House of Representatives committee that the agency should replace its lawyer-heavy enforcement staff with senior securities professionals who have years of industry experience and can understand cutting-edge financial instruments used by hedge fund traders.

He said regulators should give fraud investigators a pay incentive to unearth large fraud, and eliminate the turf wars that he said kept New York-based regulators from heeding tips he fed to the Boston office.

Markopolos discovered Madoff's alleged malfeasance in May 2000, after he became suspicious of his years-long record of success in all market conditions. Markopolos said it took him about five minutes perusing Madoff's marketing materials to suspect fraud, and another roughly four hours to develop mathematical models to prove it. He eventually delivered a detailed case to securities regulators in Boston and followed up several times over the next eight years as he continued to gather evidence. He said that important SEC officials in New York and Boston brushed his reports aside.

In testimony before members of the House financial services committee, Markopolos described "an abject failure by the regulatory agencies we entrust as our watchdog".

He estimated the size of Madoff's fraud was about $7bn (£4.4bn) in 2000 when he first alerted the SEC. Markopolos said today that figure reflected the aggregate amount on customers' financial statements, but that Madoff actually took in between $15bn and $25bn in clients' cash.

Asked to suggest remedies, Markopolos said the SEC's enforcement staff was too reliant on lawyers and people who lacked industry experience.

"They really don't comprehend the frauds of the 21st century," Markopolos said.

He said that one competent SEC regulator in Boston described relations between the Boston field office and New York field office, which had jurisdiction over ­Madoff's New York-based operation as "about as warm and friendly as the ­Yankees-Red Sox rivalry". Markopolos was told the New York office did not want tips from Boston.

"My team and I kept collecting additional information, and I kept sending it to the SEC, and they kept ignoring it," he said.He said that the SEC was afraid of bringing big cases, and that only Massachusetts state regulators and the New York attorney general's offices were willing to prosecute financial fraud.

"I gifted and wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to them but somehow they could not be bothered," he said. "If a $50bn Ponzi scheme doesn't top their list of priorities, I want to know who sets their priorities."