Madoff investment scandal Madoff struggled to keep the scheme afloat. In November 2008, Madoff Securities International (MSIL) in London made two fund transfers to Bernard Madoff Investment Securities of approximately $164 million. MSIL had neither customers nor clients, and there is no evidence that it conducted any trades on behalf of third parties. Madoff received $250 million around December 1, 2008, from Carl J. Shapiro, a 95-year-old Boston philanthropist and entrepreneur who was one of Madoff's oldest friends and biggest financial backers. On December 5, he accepted $10 million from Martin Rosenman, president of Rosenman Family LLC, who later sought to recover the
Pyramid scheme the sense that both pyramid and Ponzi schemes are forms of financial fraud. However, pyramid schemes are based on network marketing, where each part of the pyramid takes a piece of the pie / benefits, forwarding the money to the top of the pyramid. They fail simply because there aren't sufficient people. Ponzi schemes, on the other hand, are based on the principle of "Robbing Peter to pay Paul"—early investors are paid their returns through the proceeds of investments by later investors. In other words, one central person (or entity) in the middle taking money from one person, keeping part