On the heels of Bernie Madoff’s 150-year sentence for swindling billions out of his investors, here is a brief recounting, courtesy of BusinessWeek, of the top swindles of all time.
Bernie Madoff: Est. take = $65 billion
Charles Ponzi: Est. take = $20 million (not bad for 1920). His scam took six banks down with him.
R. Allen Standford: Est. take = $8 billion.
Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin: Est. take = $1.6 billion. Funds backed by subprime mortgages equates to junk.
Tom Petters: Est. take = $1 billion.
Kazutsugi Nami: Est. take = $1.4 billion. Though Nami doesn’t take the cake on amount of cash swindled, he does get points for actually creating his own new, digital money (called Enten) and eventually trying to pay back investors with it.
Samuel Israel III: Est. take = $350 million. After getting caught, Israel attempted to fake his suicide (planting his own SUV near the Hudson River with the words “suicide is painless” scrawled in the dust on the car’s hood), and go on the lam. He eventually turned himself in.
To read the complete list of top swindlers, click on the source link below.
Source:
BusinessWeek: The Greatest Financial Scandals
