Top 20 Financial Villains
Bernie Madoff needs no introduction. A man who lost $50 billion in investment funds through blatantly fraudulent activity, his lies and manipulation have harmed thousands of lives irreparably. His schemes may cause federal probing into the workings of hedge funds, unearthing more corporate culprits who used Madoff to create profits through illicit means.
Top 20 Financial Villains
"In the 16 years since his release from prison, disgraced junk-bond king Michael Milken has beaten prostate cancer, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research and reshaped an image tarnished by a 1990 conviction for securities fraud," according to the Los Angeles Times. At the same time, this former king pin of Wall Street embodied the epitome of corporate greed that flourished during the '80s, which seemed to place making money above any moral expedient. Milken served in prison from March 1991 to January 1993 and paid $650 million in fines for the felonies of stock parking and stock manipulation.
Despite these acts of redemption, his site illustrates the fact that Milken is more interested in clearing his name than fully admitting the horrid nature of his crime -- using the market unfairly to his advantage at the expense of the entire investing community.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Former CEO and chairman of Enron Kenneth Lay was convicted on 10 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy for the now infamous scandal that not only brought down his firm, but also cost investors billions of dollars. The Enron episode was a nail in the coffin of the public's trust in corporations to act in the best interests of the communities they serve. Lay died on July 5, 2006 before his sentencing scheduled for October could take place.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Former CEO of Tyco International L. Dennis Kozlowski was convicted in 2005 of spending more than $400 million of his company's money to support a high-flying luxury lifestyle. Kozlowski spent $1 million alone on a birthday party for his wife at the time, pretending the party was a shareholder meeting to justify the cost to Tyco.
Kozlowski maintains his innocence, claiming that none of the spending was hidden and that all his compensation, however extravagant, was approved by the company. He is currently serving eight years and four months to 24 years in prison for misappropriation of Tyco funds. Maybe in that time he will develop an inner sense of conscience.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Alan Bond (not pictured in this illustration) was sentenced in September of 2002 for cheating clients of his financial services out of millions of dollars. An Ivy League graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard Business School, this popular Wall Street figure had been featured as a Black Enterprise expert at the magazine's events and on prominent television shows.
Through his criminal mismanagement of client funds, many hard-working employees of large institutions were cheated out pension monies. When a member of the financial upper class steals the honestly-earned income of the middle class, you know you have a morally corrupt crook on hand.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Jeff Skilling was the CEO of the Enron Corporation in 2001. (At that time, Lay stilled served as chairman.) On May 25, 2006, he was convicted of 28 felony counts including conspiracy, insider trading, making false statements to auditors, securities fraud and insider trading.
Skilling was sentenced to 24 years and 4 months for his crimes and fined $45 million. He is currently serving his term, but is facing a resentencing. Will he be given a chance at a shorter sentence after flagrantly cooking his company's books and losing investors billions? Unfortunately, it looks like up to nine years will be shaved off his sentence.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Charles Keating, Jr. is remembered not-so-fondly as the poster "boy" of the savings and loan scandal that rocked the financial world in the late '80s. Now 85, Keating served four and one half years for multiple state and federal charges of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy related to the fraudulent mismanagement of the American Continental Corporation and the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.
Of particular note is the fact that Keating encouraged 23,000 bank clients, many retired people, to pour their savings into securities his company created, knowing they were extremely risking -- without explaining the risk. His convictions were overturned in 1996, but the government bail out necessitated by Keating's crimes cost American citizens $3.4 billion in taxpayer dollars.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Kevin Ingram was a high-flying financier with a Stanford MBA when he was arrested in 2001 for laundering money for terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden. "A protégé of former U.S. Treasury secretary Robert Rubin and one of the financial world's rising stars," Ingram was convicted in July of the same year, just 52 days before the infamous 9-11 attacks.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Joseph Jett was at the center of one of the biggest bond scandals in history. Once a star trader, Jett recorded massive profits while at Kidder Peabody by exploiting a flaw in the firms accounting system. In actuality he had lost the firm $300 million. When Jett's manipulations came to light in 1994, the resulting bad press led the parent company of the firm, GE, to sell Kidder Peabody to Paine Webber.
After being sold, the name Kidder Peabody was dropped, and the brand was history. Jett may not have harmed many investors directly, but he did single-handedly bring down a company with a 130-year history. After being fined, barred for life from trading and forced to pay restitution in 2004, Jett maintained that he did nothing wrong.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Ivan Boesky is famous for saying: "I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself." This attitude made him a major player in the shocking insider trading scandals of the '80s, in which he and his cohorts used secret information to buy stocks in total disregard for trading laws. After his conviction for making $200 million through illegal trades, Boesky was fined $100 million, served two years in prison and has been barred from working in the securities industry for life.
Hopefully, by getting caught and being fully prosecuted, Boesky's case has deterred at least a few Wall Street insiders from using their special knowledge to take advantage of a market intended to serve all.
Top 20 Financial Villains
Clive Davis Remembers Whitney Houston, Tony Bennett Demands…
Bobby Brown Breaks Down On Stage Over Whitney's Death
Looks like the Cuban-American community has its own version of Bernie Madoff. 
Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, an award-winning financial news journalist and former Wall Street Journal reporter for CNBC, has also been featured in top newspapers including the Washington Post, USA Today, and the New York Times, as well as magazines ranging from Essence and Redbook to Black Enterprise and Smart Money.
Comments: (13)
Add a comment
By: hwill2000 on 3/04/2010 10:56PM
he saw it. that's why he isn't saying anything
Reply to this Comment | Report This
By: Railgun101 on 3/04/2010 6:09AM
my brother is still waiting for an investment I am sure its a ponzi scheme! sounded to good to be true when he told me and check this out its a back in IraQ ha what the heck ? I would never believe that crap even if they did pay me LOL !
Reply to this Comment | Report This
By: Norma D. Watson on 3/04/2010 11:50AM
I was part of a ponzi scheme also by someone of my same ethnicity. He promised me 10% per month ROI and 40% if I decided quarterly. I used my last funds and he knew it. He knew I needed the money because my husband died and left only $25,000 in insurance. I live in California. He reassured me that I would have no problem with a return on my investment because he had multiple investment so if one failed the others would support my investment. I told him I needed the money to be able to stay in my home. He said that if he could make good on his word that he would return my principle. When the s__t hit the fan, he said that I technically loaned him the money for him to make investments and since the economy went sour, he lost his money also. He still lives in a $4 million dollar home; mine may foreclose if my lender doesn't accept the offer I received for a short sale.
Reply to this Comment | Report This
By: Erik on 3/04/2010 12:40PM
Tonya, the reason why Bill is not around is because Cubans are not white. Read the article the people involved where Cuban.If Bill is concidered a racist then so are you.
200B more like 500B.
Reply to this Comment | Report This
By: hwill2000 on 3/04/2010 11:16PM
sorry erik....but there are white cubans and black cubans.
Report This
By: Rene on 3/14/2010 3:26PM
What makes you think Cubans are not white? Cubans are of all colors and ethnic backgrounds. Most white Cubans can trace their ancestry to Europe. About 12% of the cuban population is of mixed race, including back, indigenous, asian, etc. The ethnic breakdown of the population of Cuba is very similar to that of the U.S.
Report This
By: charles000 on 3/04/2010 8:01PM
Economic treason is the worst of crimes, and that's exactly what many of these traitorous scumbags have done.
I don't know, and no one really knows what the eventual outcome of current circumstances will be, but the ship is sinking, taking on water and listing heavily to port, waves coming in over the bow.
Any meaningful public trust is essentially gone. The real economic tsunami is still incoming.
It's a giant Ponzi scheme. In a weird sort of way, Bernie Maddoff was just a bit ahead of his time.
I've spent a fair amount of time trying to really understand what goes on in the minds of these soulless scumbags on Wall Street.
This is the best theory I can reason with - perhaps it's wrong, but it's the only logic that makes sense, at least to me.
I'm offering the theory that somewhere in the not too distant past, going back to perhaps the early to mid 1980s, a lot of people in various think tanks and research groups began to realize that the economic engines of the western world, mapped against the world and its rapidly expanding populaitons, are simply unsustainable
The enormous cost of "existence management" of a population base which has become addicted to hopelessly unrealistic expectations is simply unsustainable, it can't last more than a certain range of time . . . the math simply doesn't work, no matter how much "slight of hand" trickery is used to disguise completely unworkable, fake economic policies.
So, for those being on the "inside", the inner elite began to suggest to their comrades in crime that it was time to simply take anything that could be had, by whatever means necessary, and let the sinking ship take on water.
This philosophy worked its way into the inner echelons of the top ivy league business schools, and became the new mantra.
It was the harvesting of the "greed is good" army of attorneys, business executives and their political whores (oops, I meant members of congress) armed with this new philosophy that became the foot soldiers and field officers of the banking and corporate consortia inner elite who were, even then, planning the biggest Ponzi scheme ever conceived of in human history.
Katherine Austin Fitts refers to this transition as the "tapeworm economy", a pump and dump fake equity and valuation scheme on a quasi-planetary scale.
It's a good description. If there is anyone who can articulate the detail minutia of this debacle in the making, I would start with her.
And they pulled it off . . . for the most part.
The flaw here, though, in their momentary delusions of grandeur, is that unlike the waning days of Rome (as in Gibbons Decline and Fall thereof), the world has metaphorically shrunk, and the range of areas to escape to for personal private paradise is quickly becoming a fleeting mirage of self indulgent and delusionary fantasy.
But at this point, this pervasive pathology of predation and lunacy has gone completely out of control. to the extent that even the earlier practitioners of corporate crime on a grand scale are taking pause.
The so-called "smartest guys in the room" aren't really that smart, but they were very clever in taking advantage of the general population's traditional trust for a couple of decades, and made sure their whores in Wash DC got what they wanted.
But, as is the case with any invading virus or bacteria, the host organism eventually dies . . .
For better or worse, that's my momentary soapbox oration . . .
Reply to this Comment | Report This
By: Susie Walker on 3/05/2010 9:39AM
What did you say??
Report This
By: titi on 3/07/2010 8:50AM
They always believe in any sh*&^%t the lowest of white males tell them. as a reasult they deserve it..
Reply to this Comment | Report This
By: titi on 3/08/2010 5:51AM
if been white mean honesty and superiority to so many minorities, that entitle white to do as they please.
Reply to this Comment | Report This