Oh, please! According to Reuters
Burned by their failure to uncover the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, U.S. securities regulators are ramping up training of staff on how to spot the warning signs of market swindles.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has been widely criticized for failing to spot the $65 billion fraud carried out by Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff. Now its inspection unit is offering 90-minute classes for employees.
They… the SEC… is saying they need the training to spot schemes similar to the Madoff scam. Okay, so we have a new head of the SEC, Mary Shapiro, and we should “assume” she is doing all she can to get the employees trained.
But, if the SEC is training to avoid more Madoff’s perhaps they should be asking Harry Markopolos to do the training. The problem with the Madoff scheme was not the lack of training as much as it was the lack of “want to” in uncovering the Madoff scandal.
From Congressional testimony, it is evident that Harry Markopolos did 99% of the work and handed it to the SEC. There was little left to discover. All they had to do was follow-up on the Markopolos information. So, it is agreed that the SEC employees need more training, just in case Markopolos doesn’t hand them the next scheme on a silver platter. But, more importantly than learning how to uncover such schemes, the employees need to have the courage to follow-up on the tips… even when the tips lead them to their friends and insiders.
The Madoff scheme was already uncovered. There was nothing left to do except check to see if Madoff made any trades, which he had not done in over a decade. How hard can that be? Unless the SEC was looking the other way.
You must log in to post a comment.