Madoff - Il mostro di Wall Street

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.

I am becoming a CFE. Certified Fraud Examiner. There were things I was not aware of that Madoff did. I watched Wizard Of Lies and they left out some things I wish they would have put in. This documentary did a lot of justice and more insights than anything else I have seen. I really liked the depositions from Madoff himself. I have not seen any of these until now. I also enjoyed how real life Madoff employees gave their insights on what it was like to work with Madoff. Again, really enjoyed this documentary. I still hate how he defrauded all of these people and in turn, he called his "clients" Greedy!! What a scum-bag.

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.

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.

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.