Honestly I don't have much sympathy for Bernie Madoff's victims

[Recursion]

I mean, obviously let the creep rot in jail, I don't have a problem with that, but I just don't feel much sympathy for the people he swindled. The scam had every single mark of a Ponzi scheme, in spades. There's no magical formula to beat the market in general, which is why there's no hedge fund that actually does it (funny side note, for some value of "funny": Jeffrey Epstein apparently masqueraded a lot of his blackmail as "running a hedge fund", which he didn't actually know how to do, so he just invested the money in broad-based indexes. That ended up outperforming a majority of actual hedge funds... )

Anyways, he swindled a bunch of rich people who should have known better. And don't get me started on the pension funds. Yes, that's awful, and it's exactly why those managers should have damn well known better than to invest in a completely opaque fund that was making promises that literally everybody knew were impossible to meet.

[redstatebluegirl]

1. Not all of the people he swindled were rich.

I have a great aunt who lost everything. She got into it through a rich friend, who told her it would be a good thing for her. She was a teacher for 40 years in New York public schools, she was struggling to get by and the rich person she knew was a former student. I think he should be in jail until he rots for what he did.

[Recursion]

3. He required SEC accreditation to invest, didn't he? (nt)

[redstatebluegirl]

4. I don't know how SHE did it, but it was done.

She filed for some type of help through a class action suit and it was not successful. If anyone lost money due to someone being dishonest, it is is wrong. He needs to rot.

[Submariner]

5. If I was your great aunt I would go after a big chunk of the $2.5 million

the feds left for Bernie's wife Ruth. At 78 she can get by on $200K for the next few years, and she can bag groceries part-time.

It's your aunt's money, not ruth's.

[redstatebluegirl]

7. It takes money to do that, she died without a dime at my home

in 2019.

[Submariner]

10. Sorry to hear she did not see justice in the end

Bernie needs to stay in prison till the end as an example to others. There are probably others like your great aunt who innocently got taken to the cleaners by Madoff, and it would be a spit in their eye to seem him let go.

Bernie probably saw the Weinstein "going into court with a walker" con, and probably thought up this "I'm sick" get out of jail free scam.

[Disaffected]

2. Greed

has that insidious effect on people - even people one would think should know better.

[Beakybird]

6. Elie Weisel's charity to raise awareness of the Holocaust was a victim.

Hadassah, another Jewish charity, was a victim. I'm sure there are countless others.
OP is off base IMO. The dude had accreditation. It was affinity fraud as well.
Last year, I invested in two solar ETFs, TAN and PBW, that both made over 60% returns. Should I assume that they're Ponzi schemes?

[Recursion]

8. You certainly shouldn't put everything in them

And if they claim that they'll sustain that kind of growth then, yes, absolutely, run away as fast as possible

[Beakybird]

11. I invested in solar and wind to help the planet.

How could I expect the solar sector to do so well with Perry as Secretary of Energy? It was just luck that is continuing into this year. TAN is up 14% for the year so far including today. PBW up 15%. I have a very modest portfolio with over half invested in clean energy.
I think that us Dems need to divest from dirty energy.
And be careful with affinity fraud! In our case, it could be a Warren or Bernie loving stock adviser with a Black Lives Matter t-shirt who's selling us the goods.

[Aristus]

9. My father-in-law is a wealthy contractor, and he is constantly on the verge of losing his fortune

to get-rich-quick schemes. I can't quite figure out why, if he's already rich, why he wants to risk his wealth (earned through the hard work of construction) on scams. As with a lot of rich people, with him I guess it's not the having, it's the getting.

[Jarqui]

12. I help a children's charity located in Thailand

The orphans from the wars/health issues along their border were hunted by men in pickup trucks with AK47s like animals to be captured for the sex or slave trades.

This charity formed a camp to help and protect them. It now cares for about 1000 of these children and some mothers.

They might have done more but Bernie Madoff effectively snatched $600,000 of their money (which equates to about two years of funding for them).

Thanks to Bernie, it has been much tougher than it would have been to help these desperate kids and keep that charity alive. We're still struggling to recover. I was on the phone with them until the wee hours last night.

You hear about refunds ... never seen a dime. Just stringing us along ...

I have a hell of a lot more sympathy for that charity and those kids than Bernie Madoff who made their lives so much more difficult.
I hope Madoff rots in hell.