From 750K to $10.00 an hour

[MA-Caver]

Sad story. Though the man bucks it up and goes back to work it's just not right that he had to do it for that reason. If he WANTED to work for the sake of working then great but having to because they lost everything and will be out on the streets if he doesn't .... just sad.
Hope they catch this Madoff bastard and take it out of his hide.

Madoff victim, aged 90, abandons retirement

Mon Feb 9, 2009 9:13pm GMT
Full story: http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE5187FM20090209
yahoo video of the story http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=12126414&ch=4226713
(Reuters) -- Ian Thiermann, age 90, has abandoned retirement and now works the aisles of a grocery store to make ends meet after losing his life savings of $750,000 to Madoff. He now hands out fliers hawking avocados and pork ribs at a supermarket in Ben Lomond, California. Thiermann, owner of a pest-control company in Los Angeles before retiring 25 years ago, enjoyed returns of 10 to 12 percent each year on his savings for about 15 years regardless of whether markets rose or fell. He lived on those returns, devoting much time to nonprofit work.
We didn't even realize we were a part of it.
A very close friend said that he and his family had been involved in an investment for the previous 30 years - 30 years, you understand. And they received the same amount, it wasn't a great amount but on average about 10 percent, over the years, even in the crashes that had taken place. They were never been affected by the crashes.
He said there's an opportunity to get into this thing. And we could form a partnership and so forth and get into it. We knew him very, very well. A number of us we're trying to be thoughtful of our own investments. Here's a guy and his family who has been in it for the last 30 years.
We had been in it for about 15 years. And in the last recession in the 1990s, we just received the same amount, about 8 to 10 percent, and we were extremely pleased. It didn't affect us at all. And then suddenly, when the crash took place and so forth, I called our friend and said this sounds really serious, can we get out and put it in something else. He said ‘that's a good idea'. So he did. We got word back that everything had been put into Treasury bonds. That's what he thought. He was dealing with this guy Madoff for all those years. And he had confidence in him.
He called us around December 15 and said ‘I've lost everything and you have lost everything'.

 

[elder999]

Madoff's been caught. The real lesson here?

Eggs?One basket?Don't.

And if the projected returns seem unreal, it's probably because they are.

 

[CoryKS]

You gotta do what you gotta do. He made some bad choices. Like Elder said, don't put 'em all in one basket. Hell, at age 90 it's probably time to stop chasing that 12% return and have some fun with what you have.

 

[clfsean]

Madoff & the guy from Texas Standford (sp... Stanford??) still should both be skinned alive & set out in in a nice South Georgia swamp...