ACEMAN

The Madoff Magnum Opus

Scandal? What scandal? This is the means by which American business does its business. The comments about prospecting for business and the sales pitch, well any insurance salesman on main street USA knows the pitch inside and out. And it is old, warmed over pitching at that! In truth, when I worked on Wall Street, the sales pitch was always insinuating "exclusivity" and "missing an opportunity." Even the role playing sessions emphasized joining an exclusive club and if you don't act NOW, you'll miss a rare opportunity to make many times your money while the experts do the heavy lifting. In fact, what was always said at the close was: "this is low-hanging fruit, why don't go get some, OK." Why this worked was always beyond me, but it did and still does. So what does this tell you about the prospects? Greed obviously, but more to the point, they did so because they were referred by a close friend or a well known personality. They were flattered to be in the same company! Who knew they were so easy to dupe. If they had a mother like mine who questioned: "Just because Guy wants to jump off the Tour Eiffel, doesn't mean you have to, too."And if they mentioned the term "due diligence" then we asked who suggested due dilligence and thus we had another prospect to sell and we did! Because we flattered the "due dilligence" guy with telling him he's right, so let me review the investment with you. Usually within five minutes or less after I pitched some of the numbers and the methodology, Mr due Dilligence would raise his right hand and say, "I see you know your stuff...so do you think I can get into this deal, too!" Zappo! I got another one and I'd get a big fat commission and perks plus bonus at the end of the year. And this was not only done in private stock deals, the bigger commissions and perks came from private placement in Real Estate, Oil & Gas and Bonds. In effect, the world of Wall Street. Perhaps the only "world" equivalent is the world of Lewis Carroll.