Introduction and Summary of the book
Harry Markopolos was an American financial fraud investigator as well as a security industry executive. At the onset of his analysis of the Madoff’s money-making means, Harry worked as a portfolio manager at a firm in Boston. What began as a simple regular kind of assignment later turned out to be the discovery of the world’s largest Ponzi scheme. Contextually, ‘No one would Listen’ is his complete coverage of how the Security and Exchange Commission turned its back on him and his team. Consequentially, they could not bar the Bernard Madoff’s historical financial crime. As a precedence to the following discussion, it is worth noting that Harry Markopolos did not prevent Madoff from crafting his way through the most catastrophic financial Ponzi scheme. On the same note, he did not save the investors in any way. But for all that his efforts are worth, he is a hero.
For over nine years, Harry and three of his colleagues frantically tried to get the SEC to examine Madoff. Due to the reasons best known to the commission, they snubbed Markopolos and his team of investigators. But Harry did not give up. He later presented up to five separate volumes of documents with tangible and credible evidence of the Madoff-scheme financial fraud. Unfortunately, the SEC would still take none of that. As such, Harry embarked on an intensive documentation of his findings just in case the scheme later blew up. Technically, Harry was a toothless dog and had no jurisdiction of any kind to stop the project. The team’s first encounter with Madoff was when he attempted to copy the scheme’s awesome rate of return. After a thorough scrutiny of this product touted to yield one percent monthly, Harry concluded that this was not possible and could be fraud. Harry affirms that they ‘were not looking for crime but just wanted to familiarize with Madoff’s numbers.’ At this point, Markopolos felt suspicious and delved deep into the matter. The peak of the ‘silent’ investigations and a breakthrough came when Thierry (the investment manager) denied the speculations of the scheme being fraudulent and even sought to prove it. He hinted that the company uses a handwriting analyst in the company’s due diligence procedures. No such systems existed, the business was built on trust the company enjoyed from its unsuspecting victims. Surprisingly yet, most of the enterprise moguls were part of the Madoff’s broker-dealer firm, but none of them admitted they were. But Harry and his team were not the only ones who knew about the fraud. Besides, two other parties also reported the crime to the SEC but it took no action. When it finally came to the limelight, many were left wondering why the commission was silent on the whole subject. The following discussion is an analysis of the situation in its entirety: the various parties involved, the major themes, and the lessons from such a scenario.