Participants in the Madoff investment scandal Participants in the Madoff investment scandal Investigators are looking for other participants in the Madoff investment scandal besides Bernard Madoff, despite Madoff's assertion that he alone was responsible for the large-scale Ponzi scheme. Harry Sussman, an attorney representing several clients of the firm, stated that "someone had to create the appearance that there were returns," and further suggested that there must have been a team buying and selling stocks, forging books, and filing reports. James Ratley, president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners said, "In order for him to have done this by himself, he would have had to
Ponzi scheme then considered a Ponzi scheme. A wide variety of investment vehicles and strategies, typically legitimate, have become the basis of Ponzi schemes. For instance, Allen Stanford used bank certificates of deposit to defraud tens of thousands of people. Certificates of deposit are usually low-risk and insured instruments, but the Stanford CDs were fraudulent. According to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), many Ponzi schemes share similar characteristics that should be "red flags" for investors. The warnings signs include: High investment returns with little or no risk. Every investment carries some degree of risk, and investments yielding higher returns