1980s
Bernard Madoff, a renowned Wall Street trader, initiates a scheme to defraud his investment clients. He eventually accepts billions of dollars from individual investors, charitable organisations, pension funds, hedge funds, and others. He claims that his sophisticated trading and hedging strategy will produce investment gains in all market conditions, though securities regulators later say he never traded any shares for client accounts.
May 2000
Massachusetts financial analyst Harry Markopolos tries to alert financial regulators to Madoff's fraud, saying his alleged trading strategy could never yield such continuously positive returns. The US securities and exchange commission ignores his warning several more times over the next few years.