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Synopsis
Bernie Madoff was a king of the financial world. He'd helped create NASDAQ and founded one of the most successful broker-dealers in the industry. He was also a beloved philanthropist. But very few people knew about his side business: he was quietly running the largest hedge fund in the world, a fund that eventually spread to over forty nations and handled tens of billions of dollars.
Harry Markopolos was a quant, a little-known number cruncher sitting at a desk at a Boston equity derivatives firm analyzing investment products. When a marketer for that firm, Frank Casey, handed Harry a prospectus outlining Madoff's strategy and asked him to create a similar product, he sat down and looked at the numbers. Literally within minutes Harry knew it was impossible to do. The numbers didn't add up.
For the next ten years, Harry Markopolos and the investigative team he recruited tried desperately to warn the government, the industry, and the financial press that the largest and most successful hedge fund in the industry was a total fraud and that the respected and admired Bernie Madoff was a crook. But No One Would Listen.
This is the thrilling, complete story of the pursuit of the greatest financial criminal in history—a chase that put Markopolos's life in jeopardy, led to international notoriety from his appearance on 60 Minutes, and once again opened the door to questions regarding the true effectiveness of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Markopolos's incredible investigation takes readers inside the financial industry, revealing the never-before-told stories behind the headlines. As he shows, Madoff was a creation of the anything-for-profit culture that has devastated our economy and that perhaps led thousands of industry professionals, who knew about the fraud, to adhere to the industry's code of silence.
No One Would Listen is the frighteningly true story of massive fraud, governmental incompetence, and criminal collusion that has changed thousands of lives forever—as well as the world's financial system.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.
Markopolos, the whistleblower who filed five unheeded complaints against Ponzi king Bernie Madoff over nine years, has produced an astonishing true-life whodunit set amidst the personalities, plots, and international intrigue of Wall Street. Having collected damning information on money manager Madoff-the respected co-founder of NASDAQ who ran the largest financial scam in history-since 1999, Markopolos's work as a chartered financial analyst and certified fraud examiner, aided by an industry journalist and two colleagues from his days as a derivatives portfolio manager, lays bare the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a tragically inept regulating agency that "didn't give a rat's ass about protecting investors," and seemed to consider Madoff "just another guy cutting some corners." Realizing he had not one but two powerful opponents-"Madoff and this nonfunctioning agency"-Markopolos refused to give up, despite fearing for his life and his family; accordingly, he transmits his team's determination and fascination in contagious detail. The hows and whys of Madoff's eventual arrest, Markopolos's subsequent appearances before Congress, and the carnival of press coverage makes a satisfying conclusion to this strange epic; Markopolos also includes complete documentation of his formal submissions to the SEC, plus his recommendations for much-needed reform at the agency.
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