By: Jack WaymirecloseAuthor: Jack Waymire Name: Jack Waymire
Email: jack@paladinregistry.com
Site: http://paladinregistry.com
About: Jack writes for the InvestorWatchdog website and Worth magazine. He worked in the financial services industry from 1976 to 2004. For twenty of those years he was the president of a Registered Investment Advisory firm and a Broker/Dealer. Jack is the author of Who's Watching Your Money? The 17 Paladin Principles for Selecting a Financial Advisor and is a co-founder of PaladinRegistry.com.See Authors Posts (87) | August 10, 2009 | Ponzi Schemes

Frank Dipascali, the finance chief at Madoff’s defunct investment advisory firm may be helping prosecutors build criminal cases against other participants in the $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

There is no way Madoff perpetrated this massive fraud by himself. He may have been the mastermind, but he had a lot of help. Investigators should be looking in two places for active participants in the scam or beneficiaries of the scam who are keeping their mouths shut.

Someone had to produce the fake performance reports that went to 11,000 investors who were conned out of their assets. Generating these reports was a massive undertaking because asset amounts on fake performance reports had to match the account balances on fake brokerage statements. Several people had to be involved to match these data sets so no one questioned the accuracy of the reports.

Then there are investors who benefitted from scam, but swore they had no knowledge that any crime was being committed. Give me a break! There is no way an honest,  semi sophisticated investor would not have questioned the exceptional returns that Madoff claimed he produced year in and year out. The probability of these returns being real was close to zero.

They were making money so they turned a blind eye to what was going on, but there is no question they knew. Does that make them criminals? Maybe not, but thousands of people were financially damaged or destroyed because these Madoff accomplices  withheld vital information that could have saved them. They should be required to pay back the profits and join Madoff in prison for a few years because they chose to benefit from the scam rather than report it.