麦道夫被捕的背后

音频下载[点击右键另存为]
The arrest of Wall Street legend Bernard Madoff has clients panic that their wealth may be gone.

It is hard to believe that somebody so successful who people trusted for years was so greedy and so corrupt to steal their money. It's, it’s remarkable people who I've spoken to are shocked that Bernie Madoff, a trusted guy would steal their money.

Madoff, former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market, built one of the most successful trading firms on Wall Street. It was at a separate, more secretive investment division located on a different floor in this office tower that he allegedly perpetrated the fraud.

According to civil and criminal complaints Madoff confessed, he had been cheating investors for years and he estimated his total losses from the fraud may have been 50 billion dollars.

"According to the criminal complaint on Wednesday, here at his Manhattan apartment, Bernie Madoff confessed to his two sons, Andrew and Mark, both senior executives in the company. The father said of his investment firm quote “it’s just a big lie. It was basically a giant Ponzi scheme.”

Madoff allegedly had been using new investment money from clients to pay supposed profits out to other investors. Under the weight of a tumbling stock market, the scheme had collapsed. One of Madoff's attorneys said "Bernie Madoff is a longstanding leader in the financial services industry. He will fight to get through this unfortunate set of events.

Madoff is out on 10 million dollars' bond. He's facing a single charge of securities fraud which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.

For cnn MONEY.com, I am Allan Chernoff.