Letters to the editor
Re “A strong message to Wall Street,” June 30
Bernard Madoff’s professed regrets have absolutely no significance. The fact that he did what he did is all we need to know about his complete lack of character.
Especially telling was the instance in which he assured the widow that her life savings would be safe in his care, rather than take that one opportunity to do the right thing and return the woman’s money to her.
Madoff never showed any pity or concern for his victims.
Marcia Goodman
Long Beach
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I think our country needs to think about how it happened, not get all excited about the length of a sentence of an older man.
Lisa Dieckmann
Los Angeles
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I was pleased to learn that the judge sentenced Madoff to the maximum.
Hopefully this will give some comfort to those who have suffered devastating losses, but there is some degree of responsibility by those who invested in his Ponzi scheme initially.
Sometimes greed takes over and people overlook the obvious risks involved, in this case because friends and relatives recommended Madoff.
Royce Weiss
Solana Beach
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The sign “Madoff Stole It, SEC Ignored It and IRS Kept It,” held up by a supporter of Madoff victims, fails to mention the financial media’s involvement, or lack thereof, in the matter.
How about adding that CNBC, Fox Business News, Forbes, etc. mostly reported how brilliant Madoff was, nothing more?
Edward Drossman
New York
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The utter lack of fear of punishment or penalty is why people like Madoff mostly succeed, and a cursory read of the paper shows others are probably operating right now in Southern California.
Why should these crooks fear anything? If they’ve wiped out a person’s savings, there is no way to hire a lawyer and wait years for court dates with inevitable postponements and appeals.
And the person being sued has all the resources of the defrauded to use in his defense. The Madoff scandal shows that the SEC does not react to complaints.
Kurt Sipolski
Palm Desert
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Why, with months of reporting about the Madoff scam, has there been so little discussion of Christopher Cox, the SEC chairman at the time? While Madoff was scamming hundreds of people, wasn’t Cox asleep at the wheel? Is there no punishment for his incompetence?
Ray Uhler
Rancho Santa Margarita
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Your article quoted a lawyer as saying: “This isn’t a guy who murdered people, who raped people or who sexually abused children.
I beg to disagree: Stealing another person’s life savings and compromising -- if not financially destroying -- that person’s (and family’s) future is almost like snuffing out a life. It could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described only as “it’s terrible.”
Victor W. Monsura
Garden Grove