Bernie Madoff Ethical Issues

Decent Essays
Theft, lying, stealing, being a criminal, and destroying lives of people are a few ethical issues that come to the surface in this white collar crime. Bernie Madoff is the epitome of unethical business practices and how the fallout is not worth the crime. Madoff has admitted that he knew he would eventually get caught and in a recent interview from jail has suggested that he could have had a successful career. The ethical issues and what made a human being do this is insurmountable. Madoff being a successful financier knew that he could not keep up the charade. More money was coming than was going out and this was ok until people started drawing money. Using other people for his gain was a devious plan Ferrell & Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2010).

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Madoff Securities Madoff securities, is a company created by Bernard l. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was founded in the year 1960 by Bernard Lawrence Madoff, who happened to be also be senior executive of the company. Bernard Lawrence started the company using accumulated funds of $ 5,000 from his business that involved the installation of sprinkler systems for wealthy New Yorkers. In his five years as executive, the company accumulated a fortune estimated at more than one billion dollars. Madoff securities performed well with an annual profit of tens of millions of dollars. The company’s performance was considered spectacular and consistent.…

    • 1363 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Madoff’s family has been held responsible for the losses of investors. Ruth Madoff is in hiding and has been removed from the life she had. While Ruth’s life was extravagant, it would be significant to note that Ruth was not charged with any wrongdoing. Ruth’s critical flaw was she was also duped by one of the most wicked con artist ever (Altaffer, 2011).…

    • 249 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The unethical decision by both parties during this scandal caused great unrest for the public. It wasn’t just the failure of laws and regulations, but also the failures of corporate leaders and attorneys that were supposed to foster an ethical self-policing practice. Enron was the example to many other businesses at the time that exploited large payoffs to accounting firms in return for misrepresented…

    • 1234 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    To this day, one of the most well known American swindlers and criminals of the administrative field is Bernard Madoff. The opportunist made it seem as though he was a caring nice individual that could be trusted, but the real truth was that he was a crazed and greedy criminal. It came as a shock to most people when he confessed to the crimes he had committed because he was a master at hiding the person he truly was. The people he worked so closely with believed in him and trusted him whole heartedly and he betrayed them by masterminding one of the largest investment frauds to ever be committed by one person.…

    • 1954 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Bernie Madoff was a master at impression management or social engineering. According to psychiatrists impression management has three goals. Ingratiation, this means to convey displaying certain positive emotions such as happiness to mimic good will. Intimidation to strike fear into the hearts of the people you want to fool, and supplication to get others to be helpful. These 3 qualities describe Bernie Madoff to a tea.…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Bernie Madoff Case

    • 332 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The ethical issues involved in the Madoff case were moral philosophy and value. The moral philosophy that Bernie Madoff portrayed completely defies the moral compass that most people use. Most people rely on their instinctive nature of honesty and trustworthiness. Bernie Madoff claims that he and his sons built a great investment firm to which there was no intention of unethical behavior. His unethical behavior got out of control and he didn’t know how to stop.…

    • 332 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the 1990’s his firm executed 9% of all daily trading. In May of 2001 two articles ran stating that Madoff had six to seven billion in assets under management, making his firm the first or second largest and was relatively unknown. This began to raise serious questions regarding his investment operations. Beginning in 2006, whistleblower Harry Markopolous, convinced the SEC to launch an investigation into him. Markopolous had said, Madoff’s business was run like a Ponzi scheme only exposed, as a result of the 2008 financial crisis.…

    • 1375 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bernie Madoff

    • 515 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Social Attitude of the Investment Industry after Bernie Madoff Bernie Madoff could be described as an ethical egotist, one who is heavily involved in an organization that does nothing but take advantage of others for personal gain (Bethel, 2015). As for his co-offenders, their personal values were more from an economic value orientation because they deemed his behavior as ethical and acceptable based upon their own financial gain (Bethel, 2015). Even today, Madoff continues to try to justify his action and writes about the loss of his two sons saying, “The fact that I was trying to protect our family by sheltering them from any knowledge or involvement in my wrong doing still fails to allow me to forgive myself” (Eustachewich, 2015, para. 6). In another interview, he stated his investors had themselves to blame because they were smart, savvy investors (Saulny, 2015). Sadly, Madoff’s lack of value, ethics, and poor judgement has led to him spending a 150 year sentence in federal prison for the $17 billion investment fraud (Eustachewich, 2015).…

    • 515 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Numerous laws were broken in the Enron scandal. The mail and wire fraud statutes of U.S. law criminalize the use of wires the enable a scheme to defraud or to obtain money by fraudulent means (Seitzinger, Morris, & Jickling, 2002). The honest-service statue, the law Skilling alleged broke that was then overturned, defines the fraud as a scheme to deprive another of the intangible right to honest service. Enron was subject to quite a few other laws that were broken. The company was supposed to disclose all information concerning federal securities to any public investor so that the public can make investment decisions.…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Although Madoff was very sly in his conn efforts, if the people around him performed their duties, as they should, he may not have gotten away with the scheme for so long. It is incorrect to believe that just because the auditors were provided with false information, they are not also liable for overlooking any such discrepancies that should raise awareness. Even the Wall Street Journal made reference to the auditors, specifically stating that it is important when considering making an investment to look into the actual accounting firm that performs audits and whether they are a recognized firm with a strong reputation (Stewart) hinting that because Madoff’s books were audited by an unknown firm, allowing him to take control of the scene forcing the odds in his favor. From this, it can be inferred that if Madoff or one of his investors had gone with a reputable accounting firm to audit the material, discrepancies would surface, and therefore Madoff would not have gotten off with his scheme for so long. In fact, after the scheme had surfaced and the truth was revealed, Scott Berman, an attorney at Freidman Kaplan Seiler * Adelman made a comment with regards to the auditors.…

    • 1325 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    We all want certain things, and sometimes greedy people want more than others. Like just about everyone, I have been a greedy person, and have had greed. My greed is ordinary though it is my motivator to go to college, get a better job, and truly succeed in life. I believe greed is good and bad because it can bring out the worst in people, but others it truly drives them to just be successful, happy people. I hope to describe how greed is something that just about everyone has and what effect it has on others.…

    • 1299 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay Outline White-collar crimes, although not discussed very often, are on rise. When one hears the word crime, they are inclined to think violence or an unethical abuse of some sort. However, people rarely take corporate crimes such as fraud, theft, forgery, or embezzlement into a higher regard, as they do not highly affect the common citizen personally. Studying these executive crimes is important to raise awareness of deceit within society, and to protect and prevent unethical practices from occurring. The latent impact of these white-collar crimes is the emotional trauma, blackmail, and loss of finances.…

    • 1228 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    White-collar crimes may seem harmless, but can take toll on families, investors,…

    • 1844 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1. Tiger Woods's sponsors made a decision that was in line with their own moral and personal attitude to decide on dropping Tiger Woods. It was an ethical issue as well as a business issue since the company may have wanted to sponsor Mr. Woods for not only his sports talents but also his present-ability as a upstanding icon. It was a decision that harked on whether or not the company could still utilize his image effectively when the information was public and tarnished. He was treated like a broken brand that was dropped when its usefulness could no longer be leveraged.…

    • 744 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In December 2008, Bernard "Bernie" L. Madoff owner of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC wasarrested for committing a $50 billion investment fraud, which later was found to be $65 billion (Bernard L. Madoff. February 9, 2009).Bernard Madoff 's business was an investing firm that pulled off a massive fraud. His firm took money from several people, rich or poor, it did not matter. His victims were Jewish philanthropists from the Upper East Side of New York, almost half the members of the Palm Beach Country Club, retired accountants living in Florida, film stars and several charitable organizations(Ahamed, L. 2011, May 14). In court 33 years old, Michael Swartz of New Jersey said, "I hope his sentence is long enough so his jail cell…

    • 1793 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays