Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities

Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities was an investment securities firm founded in 1960 by Bernie Madoff, who started it with 5,000 dollars of his own savings and a 50,000 dollar loan from his father-in-law. The firm ran two divisions, a stock brokerage business and an asset-management business, and the asset-management side became the vehicle for what Madoff later admitted was the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, estimated at 65 billion dollars. The scheme collapsed in December 2008 when Madoff confessed to his sons that the asset-management division was, in his own words, one big lie, and they reported him to authorities on December 10, 2008; he was arrested the next day. Madoff pleaded guilty in March 2009 to eleven federal felonies and was sentenced in June 2009 to 150 years in prison. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/