SMART SHORTS du 3 juillet 2023
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00:00 He is Bernard Madoff, and he is one of the biggest scammers in history.
00:04 Between the beginning of the 70s and the financial crisis of 2008,
00:09 Madoff scammed nearly 16,000 people for a total loss of 65 billion dollars.
00:15 To give you an idea, it's about the GDP of a country like Serbia.
00:19 To do this, this former Wall Street trader used a Ponzi pyramid,
00:24 a fraudulent financial setup that consists of drawing from the finances of his new clients
00:29 to pay older investors, and so on.
00:32 To scam as many people as possible, Madoff promised short-term, juicy profits to his victims.
00:37 These profits were actually a sum of the capital of the new arrivals.
00:42 To invest in his investment fund, the businessman asked for a minimum of 1 million dollars.
00:48 Among his wealthy clients, there were international stars like John Malkovich or Steven Spielberg,
00:54 but also billionaires like Liliane Bettencourt.
00:57 It was at the time of the subprime crisis that the scam was revealed to the public,
01:01 since many investors wanted to withdraw their money at the same time.
01:05 Problem, he had disappeared.
01:07 Bernard Madoff was subsequently denounced by his sons and sentenced to a 150-year prison sentence.
01:12 He died on April 14, 2021 in an American penitentiary at the age of 82.