There are at least 13,500 reasons why Bernie Madoff is staring at a 150-year jail sentence when he appears at Manhattan's federal courthouse later today. That is the estimated number of victims (no one knows for sure) of the 71-year-old fraudster who operated the world's biggest ever Ponzi scheme and who came to personify the crooked face of the credit crunch. Many of his victims lost their entire life savings, placed into Madoff's clutches at the promise of 10 to 12 per cent returns.
I have little sympathy for the "victims". They scrambled to get into a special "club" that promised massive returns on their money for doing nothing. Where was that money coming from? Ultimately is was coming from exploiting the labour of people who were actually working.
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