Ponzi scheme starchild, Bernie Madoff, is in disbelief that his scam was able to go on as long as it did. Recently, Madoff gave his first interview since being sentenced to 150 years in prison. The former Wall Street financier says that he feels remorse for scamming people out of their hard earned dollars and retirement funds.
"There were several times that I met with the SEC and thought 'they got me,'" Madoff told ABC News.
Currently, the SEC is conducting research to uncover how they missed the fraud and are expected to release their results in the coming weeks.
Madoff is currently being sued by former investors.
A Ponzi scheme usually offers investors consistently higher than normal, short-term returns that other investment firms cannot do. When a new investor enters in, that money is used to pay returns to a previous investor and so on. The perpetuation of the scam requires a continuous flow of new investors. When the economy crashed toward the end of 2008, there were a lack of new investors coming in, therefore, Madoff's scam was revealed because he could no longer pay the returns.
