Bernard Madoff Case Summary

White collar crime was defined by Edwin Sutherland as a crime committed by a respectable person of high social status during the course of their career and can include fraud, embezzlement, and insider trading (170). Madoff was charged with securities fraud, investment advisor fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud after confessing to stealing more than $50 million dollars from people over the course of decades. After the stock market collapse of 2008 it became apparent to Madoff that he would not be able to repay the money clients believed they had invested and he confessed that he never bought or sold a single stock. He simply deposited the invested money into his own account. Furthermore, Bernie Madoff often used agents of socialization to persuade his next victim into investing their life savings with him. Many of his investors were friends and family of other clients that spread the word of his work to their social networks. This used the people that potential investors trusted the most in order
It is believed by many people that Bernie Madoff was never investigated to the fullest or questioned because of his social status of power and the wealth that he maintained. As stated in the video, there were red flags for nearly a decade before he confessed, but they were dismissed because many believed that he was not capable of fraud. This enabled him to continue to steal billions of dollars from people all over the world over the course of not weeks or months, but decades. In addition, the conflict theory emphasizes the materialist view of society. This was something that Bernard Madoff prayed on. He used society’s want and need to make a dollar as quickly and easily as possible to embezzle people’s life savings right under their