Thomas Wilson
Wall Street is a place where many people go to make millions and retire rich. Unfortunately, the temptation of striking it rich attracts the wrong kind of people who will stop at nothing to make money. Checkout my list of the biggest crooks on Wall Street that unethically made millions defrauding people.
Michael de Guzman was a geologist for Bre-X; a company that participated in a gold mining fraud. Guzman falsified samples to imply that a plot of land contained a massive gold deposit. According to their assessment, there was up to 200 million ounces of gold in the ground. Because of this fraud, this 4-cent penny stock spiked to $286.50.Eventually, the scam was discovered and the companies share price dropped by 99%. De Guzman ultimately ended his life by jumping out of a helicopter although there is speculation he is still alive today. According to penny stock whizzkid, if traders spotted the fraud early they could have made thousands short selling this penny stock.
Believe it or not, Bernie Madoff was once the chairman of NASDAQ stock exchange. His hedge fund swindled billions of dollars from investors while he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. He orchestrated one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. Madoff was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 150 years in federal prison. He also was ordered to pay 17 billion in restitution to his investors.
Richard Whitney served as president of the New York Stock Exchange from 1930 to 1935 and was known as the "white knight of Wall Street" for attempting to stop the market crash of 1929 by buying shares well above market price. He had a growing reputation as an astute investor, but it was all a facade. In reality, he was a gambler, to cover his losses he embezzled money from his customers and an organization that gave aid to widows and orphans. He also took money from the NYSE’s gratuity fund and was given five to ten years in prison.
Ivan Boesky worked as a stock market analyst on Wall Street. In 1975 he started an investment fund which proved to be quite successful, making millions of dollars for investors. Little did they know he was making money through insider trading, Boesky was ordered to pay a fine of $100 million and serve time in prison.
Bernard Ebbers was CEO of WorldCom, a long-distance telecommunications company that propelled to prominence until it was discovered they cooked their books. In 2002, WorldCom filed for bankruptcy, and it was discovered that Ebbers was responsible for false financial reporting, costing billions of dollars to investors. Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
This famous TV personality was convited of insider trading because she sold all of her shares in ImClone Systems before financial results were released to the loublic. She avoided losing almost $50,000 and was sentenced to five months in prison with two years of monitoring.
Andrew Fastow was the chief financial officer for Enron. He made millions of dollars defrauding the company by creating fake companies on the internet that strictly did business with Enron, this helped raise money for the company. Balance sheets showed Enron was free from debt when the company actually owed millions of dollars. Fastow was sentenced to a ten year prison sentence.
Milken played a key role in developing the market for high-yield bonds (also known as junk bonds). In 1989 he was convicted of securities fraud, he was jailed for 10 years and fined a whopping $600 million. He sentence was later reduced for cooperating with testimony and for good behavior.
