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Bernie Madoff was a king of the financial world and a beloved philanthropist. But very few people knew that he was quietly running the largest hedge fund in the world, a fund that eventually spread to over forty nations and handled tens of billions of dollars.Harry Markopolos was a little-known number cruncher at a Boston equity derivatives firm analyzing investment products. A marketer for that firm, Frank Casey, handed Harry a prospectus outlining Madoff's strategy and asked him to create a similar product. Harry sat down and looked at the numbers. The numbers didn't add up. For the next ten years, the investigative team Markopolos recruited warned the government, the industry, and the financial press that the largest and most successful hedge fund in the industry was a total fraud and that the respected and admired Bernie Madoff was a crook.



About the Author

Harry Markopolos

Harry Markopolos attended high school at Cathedral Prep in his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration from Loyola University of Maryland and then went on to Boston College for his Master of Science in finance degree. He received a reserve commission as a second lieutenant, Infantry, in the U.S. Army and is a graduate of several Army postgraduate schools, including the Infantry Officers ' Basic and Advanced Courses, the Civil Affairs Officers ' Advanced Course, and the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College. Mr. Markopolos has commanded troops at every rank from second lieutenant to major during 17 years of part-time service in the Maryland Army National Guard and Army Reserve. He earned his Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 1996 and his Certified Fraud Examiner designation in 2008. From 2002 to 2003 he served as president and CEO of the 4,000-member Boston Security Analysts Society. He has also held board seats on the Boston chapters of both the Global Association of Risk Professionals and the Quantitative Work Alliance for Applied Finance, Education and Wisdom (QWAFAFEW), a quantitative finance lecture group. He was assistant controller, assistant manager, store manager, and district manager for his family's chain of 12 Arthur Treacher 's Fish & Chips restaurants before joining Makefield Securities in 1987. In 1988 he joined Darien Capital Management in Greenwich, Connecticut, as an assistant portfolio manager, leaving to become an equity derivatives portfolio manager at Rampart Investment Management Company in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2002 he was promoted to Chief Investment Officer but decided to leave the industry in 2004 to pursue fraud investigations full-time against Fortune 500 companies in the financial services and health care industries. He brings fraud cases to the U.S. Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, and various state attorney generals under existing whistleblower programs.The Madoff investigation, which he started in early 2000, was his first financial fraud case. He's been hooked ever since.



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