The Madoff Affair (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

Madoff investors when they thought the money was rolling in: "The government needs to keep it's nose out of our business." Madoff investors when they found out they'd been scammed" "The government should have known this was going on and stopped it."

Bienes' body language is priceless. He couldn't tell the truth if his life depended on it.

These investors KNEW their returns were too high, and STILL, didn't question it.

Although this catastrophe is over a decade, I can never get enough of this

"Why didn't you find him?!" He screams into the lifeless eyes of the very people who benefited from not finding him.

Pbs really is the gold standard for deep dives, a great watch

16,000 square foot home to a 3 bed penthouse. Those poor victims. I hope they make it through the trauma.

I will never understand how people always blame the government whenever there’s a problem but Can’t comprehend that when you eliminate regulations you have absolute chaos.

These people KNEW the investments were sketchy, due to all the secrecy. But they didn't give a shit, when cash was rolling in.

Madoff’s programmers were the real geniuses. They designed software that automatically allocated fictitious trades to individual accounts and created a phantom computer trading platform in case an investor, regulator, or auditor requested to see how the operation worked. They knew it was a fraud from the beginning and should be in prison.

This is my favorite comedy special. From everything about Bienes to “3200 seems to be… more than 15,” Frontline is killin it!

15-18%??? And sophisticated investors fell for that??? Shocking how greed can cloud your sensibility even when you know better.

Most of these people were bragging about investing with Madoff. "Our money is with Madoff but you can't get in with him. Its by Invitation only". I don't feel any sympathy for these investors.

Great Documentary, only one thing to take from it is: Never try to screw rich people out of their money, if you do, you will end up in jail for a very very long time. Do the same thing with the poor and everyonewill call it "will of the free market" and CEOs will get millions in bonuses and golden parachutes

This michael bienes looks like a seinfeld character. "How does an airplane fly? I dont ask!"

Hard to feel bad for people so blinded by greed & ignorance. They didn't ask any questions because they didn't care, they just wanted returns.

There's an old saying: The big thieves hang the little thieves. The takeaway: The big thieves never hang each other. The documentary could not have made this point any more clear.

I find it hard to believe a licensed CPA saying he wouldn’t understand an explanation of the way it works. He is a liar of the extreme. All part of the con!!!!

I’ve worked in the financial industry for years and I’m currently employed with a Fortune 500 company. I make less than 6 figures a year (just a regular service representative), but I’m telling you, just from my experience, the entire financial industry is riddled with oversight and fraud.

I have worked in corporate finance for just about my entire career, and it is baffling to me that this fraudulent enterprise survived as long as it did. Especially as high profile as the firm was, you would think the SEC would have been all over them when even cursory examination from an untrained eye would have quickly pointed to the mathematical impossibility of returns. The fundamental problem of Wall Street is that the banks, hedge funds, brokerages, IB's etc. are always infinitely more talented and resourceful than the fed employees and agencies who are tasked with stopping potential impropriety. Any given day there are hundreds of such con games in play, and only a minor fraction are ever caught.