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
Pyramid scheme nothing more than legalized pyramid schemes. Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries or regions including Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada , China, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Franchise fraud is defined by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation as a pyramid scheme. The FBI