Madoff - Il mostro di Wall Street

A gripping and informative true crime documentary series directed by Joe Berlinger. The series details the rise and fall of Bernie Madoff, a Wall Street executive who ran a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of billions of dollars. Berlinger uses a mix of expert interviews and recreations to tell the story, with author Diana B. Henriques serving as a particularly knowledgeable and engaging guide through the complex events. The final chapter of the series focuses on the heartbreaking fallout of Madoff's crimes, including the impact on his family and the investors who lost everything.

One of the most impressive aspects of "Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street" is the way it untangles the complicated financial schemes at the heart of Madoff's fraud. Through clear explanations and well-chosen anecdotes, the series makes it easy for viewers to understand how Madoff was able to pull off such a massive fraud for so long. It's also shocking to see just how many people turned a blind eye to Madoff's crimes, and how the government failed to intervene despite multiple warning signs.

Overall, "Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street" is a must-watch for true crime fans, and serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of greed and the importance of holding those in positions of power accountable.

What is not excellent and what was used to really sell this documentary as new info, is the salacious and absolutely unproven allegation that Madoff was using organized crime and drug cartel money. The only evidence of this they offer is that Madoff parked money in the Cayman Islands, which even the documentary admitted, so do millions of legitimate investors. The evidence against him using funds from criminal enterprises, however, is overwhelming and ignored. If he were using such funds he would never have had the cash shortfalls he experienced. OG and drug cartel monies are not subject to the vagaries of the markets. Hence, when the market crash came in 2008, Bernie would have been sitting pretty with his OC money. Lastly, if Madoff had been fronting OC money and that yappy dog, Harry Markopolos, was threatening to expose and end the scheme, he would have woken up dead!

Otherwise, it was an excellent retelling of the Madoff tale and underscores how good and accurate the Robert De Niro/ Michelle Pfeiffer 'Wizard of Lies' was.

For anybody who just heard faint echoes about the "Madoff monster" this documentary provides a good insight into his crimes. However, starting with weak points first, it suffers from a severe case of Netflexite, aka that annoying device of starting somewhere mid-point of a story and working its way back and forward quite randomly.

Second, we never get any info about what happened to the Security & Exchange Commission's inspectors who "failed" to inspect or to the SEC at large, the "commission" that showed only gross incompetence or even collusion with the monster.

The story starts with Madoff arrest on 11 Dec. 2008, the terrible year of the great crisis and works its way back to Madoff's birth, youth, marriage to Ruth and origins of his firm, with excruciatingly boring details. There are many interviews with employees from the legit Madoff operations and none from the illegal - no surprise there.

There are also many re-enactment, of which at least half is superfluous. In short, Madoff run his illegal scheme from the 17th floor of the Lipstick building and the legal from the 19th. Employees from the 19th were forbidden entrance to the 17th and even Mark and Andrew, Bernie's son were not allowed. But even if this would be considered at least bizarre and worth exploring, nobody did anything for decades.

Some external connections started sniffing around Madoff as far back as 1992, when his name was mentioned to the SEC. Since then, there were six investigations on Madoff, all botched.

At this stage I would have like to watch a documentary about SEC and what happened to those "inspectors" - I guess nothing, but still...

Four episodes about this complex yet easy fraud are long to digest and the tragic ending comes none too soon, with Mark committing suicide, Andrew dying of cancer, Ruth being destitute and Bernie dying in the slammer, also none too soon. A tighter editing and less flourishing would have helped.

Bernie Madoff perpetrated one of the greatest frauds in history, but also one of the simplest: he simply pretended to have bought low and sold high, and with great reported profits nobody asked for their money back, at least not until the stock market crashed in 2008. This series describes him an a "monster", but I find it hard to hate him as much as the tech frauds: at least he wasn't claiming he could save the world. What's interesting is his ordinary origins (he was New York Jewish middle class, his right-hand man was Italian-American), and the sense to which the scam depended on affinity fraud (selling to people from his own background); the contrast with the Europeans he conned, old-money banking aristocracy, is striking. There are many remarkable details of this story, but like many Netflix documentaries it's slightly too long, with too many people commenting without adding that much information; no-one willing to confess to being aware of the fraud gives an interview (although there is film of Bernie himself claiming all responsibility).

Detailed, interesting and exposing, the docu-series intricatly scrutinises much of the key apsects of Madoff ponzi scheme in which he was able to steal money for decades.

My only qualm with these sort of documentaries is that they work almost like a distraction from what's going on in other places. "Don't look over there, look over here!" Like, there was a documentary that came out about the crash of 2008 in which all the contributing perpetuators like George Bush appeared in the documentary to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing and blame it on other factors instead rather than the people making the decisions.

The titular person Madoff is referred to as "the monster of Wall Street", as if enormous fraud isn't cirrently business as usual on Wall Street, and that everything is as it should be after Bernie was arrested.

The documentary talks about the people who suffered and lost as a result, but make no mention that it's still perfectly fine on Wall Street to steal from poor people without any recompense. Bernie was arrested because he stole from rich people, which is the only crime on Wall Street that gets taken seriously. If all the hedge funds, financial advisory firms and brokerages and market makers who are currently breaking the law carte blanche to steal from low income and retail investors were to be arrested, Wall Street would become a skeleton of its former self. A ghost town. Yet according to this docu-series Madoff was the big boss to take down. The evil monster like no other.

The series is good and informatice but I still hope people realise that Madoff was the fall guy for Wall Street theft to continue, and that taking him out did nothing to help the little guy from being crushed under the boot of government and financial sector corruption.