According to Madoff's allocution (where the defendant details his crime in connection with his guilty plea) provides some of the details that have been missing from the story thus far.
According to Madoff, the fraud started in the early 1990s, when the markets were not doing well. He began the fraud as most Ponzi schemes start - continuing to pay dividends to existing investors, thinking that the markets would turn, and all would eventually be alright.
Well, that didn't happen. He kept the money at Chase Manhattan Bank, and despite the passage of years, and the delivery of account statements to clients, he did not make any trades, but rather spent his time moving money around to give the appearance of activity, lying to the SEC (that should make Chairman Cox happy) and fabricating account statements.
According to the allocution, he lied to clients, lied to regulators, filed false accounting statements, fabricated a trading stragegy and more, to continue the fraud for over 15 years.
Madoff when out of his way to say that the brokerage firm's business was legitimate and profitable. That may be true, but the emphasis is undoubtedly to protect his brother and sons who ran that business.
The details of the allocution are at JDSupra - Madoff Plea Allocution
According to my calculations, the sentence will be a minimum of 50 years, undoubtedly more given the plea to 11 different felony counts.
