Bernard Madoff

1. Describe three types of illegal business behavior alleged against Mr. Madoff and for each type of behavior, explain how the behavior is illegal or unethical in the conduct of business. Answer:   Bernard Madoff, founder and owner the of the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, had a laundry list of charges brought up against him for his involvement in the Ponzi scheme. It was estimated that his firm was worth more than $65 billion dollars; however, this multi-billion dollars firm was built on lies and deception. Bernard Madoff’s unethical business behaviors consist of fraud, theft, and false pretense   (Haruni, 2008).
Constance E. Bagley in Managers and the Legal Environment defines fraud as any intentional deception that has the purpose of inducing another in reliance upon the deception to part with some property or money (Bagley, 2010).   Madoff intentionally took millions of dollars from several of investors and businesses with no intention of returning their investment using the Ponzi scam.   On the Wikipedia website, it refers to the Ponzi scheme as a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering returns other investments cannot guarantee, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors to keep the scheme going.   Bernard Madoff fraudulent behavior caused many investors and organizations to lose millions of dollars and he knew that there was no guarantee investment return using the Ponzi scam.   Also, Mr. Madoff presented illegal behavior of theft.   In criminal law, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent. The word is also...