Saturday, August 27, 2011

Chasing Madoff: A Wistleblower's Tale

Meet Harry Markopolos. It took him four hours to discover Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme and eight years to convince anyone that the guy was a crook, and then only when the stock market tanked leaving the Madoff mess to unravel on it's own, bringing down millions of investors.
Poor Harry. He was the guy screaming wolf when the wolf was at the door and nobody believed him.
This interesting, frustrating documentary follows Harry's growing obsession with the Madoff scheme, his attempts to convince the SEC that the investor was a fraud and his efforts to get the press to take his allegations seriously.
A lesser man — you might say a saner man — would have given up. But luckily he was neither.
The film leaves us wondering why the SEC failed so miserably at its job. Were they just incompetent or were they complicit in the hoax?

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