Litigation

Year of "Flabbergasting Financial Criminality"

By John Darer

Page Six Magazine refers to 2008 as "a Year of Flabbergasting Financial Criminality"

A historical swindler's gallery that includes Bernard Madoff, Marcus Schrenker,Arthur Nadel,Richard S. Piccoli and Gen-See Corporation,Norman Hsu, Lou Pearlman a/k/a "Big Poppa",Charles Ponzi,William Miller a/k/a "520%",Dana Giacchetto, Raffaello Follieri, Alberto Vilar shows that even the rich and sophisticated are susceptible to dissipation of assets through sordid financial schemes.

Then of course you have the corporate accounting scandals such as Worldcom, Enron, Adelphia and Tyco in the early 2000s that wrecked the lives of the common folk who worked for or invested in these entities.

Tort victims have unique challenges which are often combined with unforeseen future needs. Tort victims, like retirees, generally have no means to earn back mistakes, much less the ability to endure the torment of being a victim again, this time of a financial scam. Consider the mental and physical anguish of first being a personal injury victim, or the survivor of a wrongful death and THEN subsequently losing the recovery from that event.

Be careful who you trust. Just because someone is a large donor to charitable causes is not a reason to throw caution into the wind. The prosecution claimed that some of the money Alberto Vilar stole from his clients was used to meet philanthropic commitments that he had made. Given that there are now reports that the Madoff fund may have made no trades, how much of Bernard Madoff's largesse was legitimate?  According to the Associated Press, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) , confirmed there was no evidence of Madoff's secretive investment fund executing trades through his brokerage operation. And Fidelity Investments, which had a money-market fund listed among the many trades included in statements Madoff's fund sent to customers, says Madoff was not a client.

"If these managers are not focused on preservation of capital, they should not have the right to manage other people's money" Arpad Busson, CEO of EIM S.A., Wall Street Journal on Sunday January 18, 2009.

That's for damn sure!

Structured settlements funded for plaintiffs via structured settlement annuities or structured settlements funded for plaintiffs via United States Treasury Bonds offer a respite and alternative from the uncertainty, for plaintiffs and their attorneys.

Full post as published by Structured Settlements 4Real on January 19, 2009 (boomark / email).