Sense on Cents

Having interviewed noted attorney Helen Davis Chaitman on No Quarter Radio’s Sense on Cents with Larry Doyle on November 1st (a recording of that show can be heard here), I am compelled to share this press release. Investors need to fully understand and appreciate the critically important role that SIPC is supposed to fulfill and the fact that it has largely served at the behest of the industry much like its regulatory brethren at FINRA.

LD

MADOFF VICTIMS ACCUSE SIPC OF FORCING INVESTORS TO BAIL OUT WALL STREET

Group of Madoff victims files brief saying Securities Investment Protection Corp. was grossly under funded and is defaulting on its obligations to investors

New York, NY – Lawyers representing victims of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme filed papers in federal bankruptcy court Friday charging the Securities Investment Protection Commission (SIPC) with attempting to enrich Wall Street at the expense of customers of SEC-regulated broker/dealers. The brief argues that SIPC has withheld insurance money rightfully owed to Madoff investors by using an illegal definition of “net equity,” thereby depriving investors of the $500,000 in SIPC insurance which Wall Street is obligated to pay them.

“Just as American taxpayers were required to bail out Wall Street to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars after Wall Street recklessly brought the global economy to its knees, so to, Madoff’s destitute customers are being forced to bail out SIPC,” the brief reads.

SIPC, established in 1971 to instill confidence in the capital markets, insures investors up to $500,000 against the dishonesty of an SEC-regulated broker. The investors’ brief  states that SIPC only had assets of $1.7 billion at the time the Madoff fraud was uncovered, but was facing losses of $2.5 billion. It charges that instead of paying all the investors their rightful money and drawing on its $2 billion credit lines, SPIC elected to default on its obligations, re-defining, after the fact, its obligations to investors.

The legal case hinges on the definition of the term “net equity,” defined in SIPA as the balance on the customer’s last statement.  For the first 38 years of its existence, SIPC complied with this definition.  However, faced with the Madoff loss, SIPC now claims for the first time that net equity means “net investment,” or the difference between the total amount invested and the total amount withdrawn, regardless of how many years the account was opened.  The investors are asking the court to compel SIPC to immediately replace securities in each customer’s account up to a value of $500,000.

“Instead of protecting American investors, SIPC is using this as an opportunity to enrich its own members,” said Helen Davis Chaitman of Phillips Nizer LLP, an attorney representing the Madoff Victims. “This is a money grab, pure and simple, and it is not legally supportable.”

SIPC consists of all of the SEC-regulated broker/dealers and was established, by Congress, to assess its members and pay insurance to investors whose money or securities were stolen.  For the entire period from 1996 through 2008, SIPC charged each member firm only a token $150 per year for SIPC insurance.  As a result, SIPC did not have the funds to cover the insured amount of the Madoff loss (up to $500,000 per customer).  Congress had repeatedly warned SIPC that it was under funded, the brief notes, but to no avail. To date, thousands of investors have yet to receive their SIPC insurance, including hundreds involved in this lawsuit.

Not only has SIPC refused to pay 2,335 out of 4,903 active Madoff accounts, the Trustee is seeking to “claw back” from investors the funds they withdrew in excess of their net investment.  The brief filed today asserts that SIPC has no legal authority to reduce customer payments due to alleged preferences or fraudulent conveyances and charges that these actions are “solely to enrich SIPC.”

“Who made them Robin Hood, deciding who will be forced to sell their houses to enrich Wall Street?” said Maureen Ebel, a Madoff investor involved in the lawsuit. “People have already lost everything they had to Wall Street, and now they want to take more. Even after greedy bankers almost destroyed our country, they are still being allowed to play by their own rules.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at 2:07 PM and is filed under Bernie Madoff, Bob Rodriguez, General, Madoff, SIPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.