{"id":105300,"date":"2016-09-04T08:23:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T16:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=105300"},"modified":"2016-09-04T08:23:56","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T16:23:56","slug":"why-were-so-many-madoff-victims-jewish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=105300","title":{"rendered":"Why Were So Many Madoff Victims Jewish?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Atlantic Feb. 8, 2016<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The trust people tend to feel toward others in the same ethnic, racial, and political groups makes them easy targets for scammers.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s ABC mini-series chronicled the most famous financial fraud in recent American history: Bernard Madoff\u2019s $50 billion Ponzi scheme, which devastated elite institutions and families of the American Jewish community. The scale of Madoff\u2019s crimes was breathtaking. There\u2019s much to be said about his crimes\u2014not least about the incompetence of the regulatory apparatus that failed to stop him despite repeated warnings and what researchers Greg Gregoriou and Francois Lhabitant quite appropriately called \u201ca riot of red flags<\/a>\u201d over many years.<\/p>\n

The tragedy itself was also its own sort of warning. Madoff\u2019s victims were not a random assortment of the well-off; he decimated a segment of the wealthy Jewish community<\/a> and several Jewish charitable organizations<\/a>. Knowing the general magnitude of Madoff\u2019s crime, I\u2019m still taken aback by the particulars, which betray Madoff\u2019s lack of conscience and any sense of limits. He wiped out Elie Wiesel\u2019s life savings, and stole $15 million from Wiesel\u2019s foundation<\/a>. Madoff defrauded Hadassah. Who defrauds Hadassah? That\u2019s like mugging your grandmother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Atlantic Feb. 8, 2016: The trust people tend to feel toward others in the same ethnic, racial, and political groups makes them easy targets for scammers. Last week\u2019s ABC mini-series chronicled the most famous financial fraud in recent American … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse","category-jews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t