Ponzi Schemer

As greed goes, no one had seemingly done it better than the fictional character, Gordon Gekko (Wallstreet).

He coined infamous phrases like:
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

Well, there is a real life person that would agree whole heartedly with these philosophies and that would be one Bernie Madoff, who headed up an investment securities firm catering to very high profile clients. While Mr. Gekko was into corporate takeovers at any cost, Bernie gained the trust of his investors, many of whom were "personal" friends and conned them out of millions of dollars, which he did very slowly and quite methodically.
Madoff's advisory business had $17.1 billion of assets.
As the supposed lone mastermind behind one of the largest investment fraud schemes, he was finally arrested in NY this week.
Among his prominent victims was Mort Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News and US News & World Report, who ran a fund with considerable sums invested. You can usually catch him sitting in on the political round table discussions at the weekend with the McLaughlin group. Something tells me he'll be MIA for a while, cleaning up his financial messes.
Also caught in this bilking was Steven Spielberg. His charity, the Wunderkinder Foundation, was a client.

Our current world economic crisis as it stands really didn't need any more casualties.
I guess there's a reason why greed is listed as the first of the 7 deadly sins.

Good job Bernie!