Savings lost to Madoff, elderly forced back to work (90 yr old working in grocery store)

[Liberal_in_LA]

Savings lost to Madoff, elderly forced back to work

http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKTRE5156MV20090206
By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - After losing his entire life's savings to disgraced fund manager Bernard Madoff, 90-year-old Ian Thiermann abandoned retirement and now works the aisles of a grocery store to make ends meet.

Handing out fliers hawking avocados and pork ribs at a supermarket in Ben Lomond, California, Thiermann is one of many facing dramatic lifestyle changes after losing their savings in Madoff's suspected $50 billion (33.8 billion pound) Ponzi scheme.

Thiermann wasn't even aware he had invested with Madoff until December 15, when a friend who managed his investments called him on the telephone. "He said, 'I've lost everything and you have lost everything.'" For Thiermann, that meant $750,000.

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On December 17, six days after learning of her losses, the 60-year-old widow found work cleaning the home of a friend and caring for a 93-year-old woman. Ebel's husband, a doctor, died in 2000 at age 53. The former nurse is also selling her luxury Lexus SUV and a winter home in Florida.

"I HELD ONTO MY DOG AND I CRIED"

"On the first day I went to work, after pushing that vacuum cleaner around, I came home and said to myself 'this is what my life has come to,' and I held onto my dog and I cried," Ebel said in a telephone interview.

In Pompano Beach, Florida, 73-year-old Irwin Salbe also expects to return to work after losing about 75 percent of his investment portfolio to Madoff, who according to court documents confessed to his sons on December 10 that the firm's investment-advisory business was "basically a giant Ponzi scheme."

[JVS]

1. I urge the authorities to consider capital punishment in this case!

[underseasurveyor]

2. Oh Oh Oh

:mad:

I'm coming ever closer to that sentiment myself. Just put him in a room with his victims and shut the door.
Have video cameras of course:popcorn:

[midnight]

3. This scandle seems so similiar to Enron.

[Uben]

4. The real crime.....

.....is that there were no safeguards in place to prevent this. Anyone handling that much money should have a microscope on their every move! Have we seen anything being done by congress to prevent this from happening again? If not, how many more are susceptible to the same scheme? I suspect Madoff will get his just deserve. You screw that many out of that much and I wouldn't give a dime for his life. I'm sure there are more than one that would give a million to see him suffer.

[SpiralHawk]

6. Republiconomics in action - predatory financial screw jobs

And the republicons just sneer and smirk at Americans...

[hologram]

7. In a just world...

the bigger you are the more scrutiny you would be required to endure because the more damage you are capable of. In a worst case scenario King Kong is going to do a hell of a lot more damage to the neighborhood than a spider monkey. :)

[MilesColtrane]

10. That's what the SEC is supposed to be for.

I think the new Attorney General is going to find massive bribery and graft among Bush's SEC in regards to the Madoff case.

Hell, a SEC compliance officer married Madoff's niece.

Madoff could have given each of the 3,800 employees of the SEC a million dollars each, and still gotten away with over 90% of what he stole.

[Baby Snooks]

5. The two Americas...

There is almost $1 billion in assets, much of it in cash, and more is probably there. So as it stands, the investors will get 2 cents on the dollar. If indeed there was $50 billion in invested assets. Of course, the investors won't get 2 cents on the dollar. The attorneys will get 1 cent and they will get 1 cent. There may be another $1 billion. So the attorneys will get 2 cents and the investors will get 2 cents.

Of course the 2 cents the attorneys will get is a lot more in total than the 2 cents the investors will get.

The securities fraud fund will not pay $500,000 to each investor. It will pay up to $500,000. The large investors may be get $500,000. The small investors, like Ian Thiermann, will not. They may get $5,000.

The two Americas. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Even when fraud is involved. Many of the investors of course were laundering money to evade taxes. And will get some of that back. Of course most of what they get back will go to attorneys and accountants who hid the fact that what they invested was actually laundered. But still have enough to start over. Although it's really a matter of just continuing on. The rich are still rich. Just not as rich.

The two Americas. Where the rich hire attorneys to keep them from going to prison and the poor get attorneys appointed by the courts to negotiate how long they will go to prison.

The two Americas. Where the rich lose their fortunes and sell the real estate and jewelry and art and antiques and start over and the poor pass out flyers in the grocery stores.

Welcome to America. Rich to one side. Poor to the other side.

[madrchsod]

8. he deserves a death by a thousand paper cuts

but he`s living in his multi million dollar condo while his family is changing their name.


this thing is the definition of pure evil

[katmondoo]

9. And Martha Stewert goes to jail

she told a lie, no one lost money, the business didn't lose money, the only one hurt was Martha herself. She still had her pride when she came out, she didn't whine, she didn't run around on talk shows to promote her innocence and the unfairness. She moved on.