Participants in the Madoff investment scandal group of hedge funds owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co, as well as, its parent companies in December 2010, seeking more than $2 billion and alleging that company executives ignored "obvious warning signs" that Madoff was running a fraud. Picard alleged that Tremont failed to do any meaningful review of Madoff's operations or purported investment results, blindly allowing Rye to turn over half its $6 billion in client assets to Madoff and losing half that money when the scheme finally collapsed. The payment of $1 billion to the Madoff truste, provided by Massachusetts Mutual Life as a loan to
High-yield investment program High-yield investment program A high-yield investment program (HYIP) is a type of Ponzi scheme, an investment scam that promises unsustainably high return on investment by paying previous investors with the money invested by new investors. Operators generally set up a website offering an "investment program" which promises very high returns, such as 1% per day (3678% APY when returns are compounded every day), disclosing little or no detail about the underlying management, location, or other aspects of how money is to be invested. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has said that "these fraudulent schemes involve the purported issuance,