Markopolos's book excerpt

The SEC proved equally inept when it came to Markopolos's other cases. He claims he gave the agency 20 cases of market timing, which proved that various companies had stolen billions of dollars from investors. The SEC, Markopolos says, turned down all of them. One of his examples included a huge mutual fund that had monthly turnover percentages in its international equity funds of 1,100 to 1,300 percent range per month.
Markopolos is withering in his dismissal of just about every SEC employee whom he approached, including New York Branch Chief Meghan Cheung -- "the strongest impression that I got from her was that I was bothering her" -- and Assistant Director Doria Bachenheimer. The notable exception was Ed Manion in the SEC's Boston office who "was more determined to expose Bernie Madoff's scheme than I was," but was stymied by jurisdictional issues.
When he first brought his concerns -- and a voluminous file -- to the SEC in 2000, Grant Ward, the agency's New England regional director of enforcement, was woefully unprepared to handle the assignment, writes Markopolos. "As I explained this massive fraud to Ward, it very quickly became clear he didn't understand a single word I said after hello... if blank looks were dollar bills, I would have walked out of that room a rich man. He was coldly polite, but he didn't ask a single probing question. I never knew if that represented a lack of interest, a lack of comprehension, or simply a desire to go to lunch."
Even his buddy, Manion, was devastated with Ward's non-response. When Markopolos asked him if he thought Ward got it, Manion replied: "Not one single word of it."
For years, Marokopolos took extra precautions, out of concern for the safety of his family. He says he lived under a death sentence, terrified that his pursuit of Madoff was putting his family in jeopardy since billions of dollars were at stake, "and apparently some of that money belonged to the Russian mafia and the drug cartels - people who would kill to protect their investments... So I wouldn't start my car without first checking under the chassis and in the wheel wells. At night I walked away from shadows and I slept with a loaded gun nearby..."
He started carrying an lightweight Model 642 Smith and Wesson everywhere he went and asked the local police department in his small town of Whitman, Massachusetts for 24/7 protection.
In addition, his wife got her handgun license, he upgraded the alarm system around his house and imagined the ways that Madoff's hit men would kill him: "if Madoff wanted to kill me he was going to use professionals, and that meant a double-tap with two bullets to the back of my head."
Media Failure: Didn't Anyone Want a Pulitzer?
And Makropolos slams the media, expressing his incredulity at their lack of initiative. In early March of 2002, Markopolos claims he sent a copy of his SEC submission on Madoff to a senior reporter at Forbes but it was ignored. "The lack of serious interest was astonishing. I think the editors at Forbes, like so many others we were to encounter, were victims of their own hubris... In fact, I suspect that the only way he would have taken it less seriously was if it had been written in crayon. He was just too smart to recognize the truth."
Two reporters who did stories on Madoff were MARHedge reporter Mike Ocrant, who become an integral part of Makropolos's team and Barron's reporter Erin Arvedlund, who followed up on Ocrant's original story. But Markopolos was frustrated that both stories failed to make a ripple, especially at the SEC. And he attributes the agency's deafening silence to the fact that they never read the stories because they don't have a publication budget, "meaning staff members have to pay out of their own pockets for any industry material," including even the Wall Street Journal.
The Most Tragic of Ironies
The most poignant part of the book involves Markopolos's tragic failure to prevent French money manager Thierry de la Villehuchet from losing billions to Madoff -- and then committing suicide weeks after Madoff's arrest. In the bitterest of ironies, Markopolos first learned about Madoff in 2000 from de la Villehuchet, spurring Markopolos's decade-long obsession.
When the Frenchman bragged about how his funds were handled by Madoff, who guaranteed him an amazing one to two-percent monthly return, that raised eyebrows and Markopolos and his associates began to dig into Madoff.
Within minutes of scanning Madoff's numbers, Markopolos says he knew he was a fraud, telling one of his associates, "There's no way this is real. This is bogus". The more he looked, the more problems began emerging as "clearly as a red wagon in a field of snow... and that's when we began chasing Bernie Madoff," writes Markopolos, who has a fondness for colorful metaphors.
Markopolos and his associates repeatedly warned de la Villehuchet over the next eight years to no avail. At one point, when they warned him and questioned his faith in Madoff, de la Villehuchet said, "If I'm wrong... Then I'm a dead man," explaining that he had invested billions from Europe's wealthiest families in Madoff.
Markopolos says he wept on and off for three days when he learned that de la Villehuchet had slit his wrists with a boxcutter:
"And truthfully, I've never stopped wondering if I could have saved his life."