Madoff: El monstruo de Wall Street

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.

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.

Featuring slow-motion actor re-enactments, the New York Stock Exchange-style display graphics scrolling along the bottom of the screen, and obligatory views of hysterical brokers on the trading floor, it's all really interesting. But I believe that I've had enough of being entertained by the real atrocities of unrepentant guys. At least Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street offers the victims of white collar crimes whose stories are frequently ignored a voice. This series shed light on atrocities that take place in Wall Street and how it is constantly ignored even though multiple red flags. Pity all the victims involved.

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).

A very interesting documentary on a topic that I think is good to know for most people. But, in typical Netflix fashion, is dragged out over way too many episodes and cost you way too much of your time.

The lack of original footage has been made up by some acting, but all scenes seem endlessly repeated. Good they interviewed a lot of involved people and they got a hand on some original content though. But it feels like it could fit in a 1 hour documentary movie. So yes this is a great topic, but I'd rather advice to read a news article on it than to spend your hours of precious time on Netflix.