Mini-Madoff scheme

[Victor]

I thought I posted this to the list, but it seems to have been a closed
reply.

==

I've noticed that the "mini-Madoff" expression has become popular when a
number of relatively smaller  (in the millions up to single-digit
billions of dollars) swindlers popped up all at the same time. I am not
sure if NYT coined the term or if it was in circulation shortly prior to
that, but here's the NYT headline from January 27/28, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/business/28ponzi.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Troubled Times Bring Mini-Madoffs to Light

I just checked a couple of blogs that routinely use the phrase now and
the first occurrence on each of them is also on January 28, so it traces
back to the NYT headline. The schemes that I have seen referred to as
"mini-Madoffs" have ranged from $150G to $8B, the latter being Allen
Stanford. Now that the Madoff figure has shrunk by more than half, there
does not seem to be anything "mini" about Stanford. I am sure there are
a lot of smaller scheme covered as well, with "mini-Madoff" effectively
replacing "Ponzi" as the generic investment swindle. Note that "Ponzi
scheme" has been widely used in reference to schemes that would not have
technically qualified as Ponzi schemes, so switching to "mini-Madoff
scheme" is not much of a stretch.

    VS-)


James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
> A couple of comments:
>
> - "mini-Madoff scheme" implies that there is the term "Madoff scheme", but how a Madoff scheme differs from any other Ponzi scheme is not known.
>
> - How large was Madoff's scheme?  Most news articles say "$50 billion" but that figure was given by Madoff, who by now has been proven to be a liar.  Recent estimates are that Madoff took in somewhere between $10 and $20 billion.  How then would you classify the fraud at the Stanford financial operations, which seems to have been 8 billion dollars?  It is "mini" compared to $50G, but is it "mini" compared to $10G-$20G?
>
> - Whatever that $1G scheme that Markopolos described was, it has not yet been identified in the news.
>

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