No one would listen
by Harry Markopolos · first published 2010
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Firsthand account from the whistleblower who spent years trying to alert the SEC to Madoff, offering a detailed look at how the fraud was missed and why regulators failed. Suits anyone curious about Madoff or oversight.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
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…fantastic, as is his followup book Freezing Order. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609522-red-notice https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59366154-freezing-order I also liked Harry Markopolos' No One Would Listen detailing his years investigating and reporting Bernie Madoff. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7740121-no-one-would-lis... The Smartest Guys in the Room, covering the rise and fall of Enron, is…
on “Books to read to understand financial crime” ↗…conclude it was a fraud even though it obviously was. I will leave the reader to judge the competence of the SEC but if you are thinking that this was hard to see I would recommend Harry Markopolos's book 'No One Would Listen'. Ultimately as a potential investor this would have been easy to spot as at least suspect. The first couple of due diligence questions to ask are about custody arrangements and their auditor. Understanding…
on “Madoff’s Victims Are Close to Getting Their $19B Back” ↗There's a great book by Harry Markopolos and his quest to expose Bernie as a fraud for years called No One Would Listen. It's a fascinating read although a tad infuriating: https://www.audible.com/pd/No-One-Would-Listen-Audiobook/146...
on “Bernie Madoff’s unwitting accomplice: The AS/400 (2009)” ↗…like the Treasury Secretary and his staff will often have people from industry. But rank-and-file regulators are, as I understand it, often not from industry. Harry Markopolous has an excellent book, "No One Would Listen" (http://www.amazon.com/No-One-Would-Listen-Financial/dp/04705...) about how he warned regulators multiple times about Madoff. In the book, he explains how good regulators often end up going to industry…
on “EVE players abuse faction warfare to produce trillions of ISK” ↗well the whole Madoff thing is quite interesting and informative. You should start with Harry Markopolos "No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller", here's the article quoted in this post (which quotes the book itself) : http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a9Aa_...
on “JPMorgan Pays for Shorting Madoff Without Telling Anyone” ↗…Schiller; http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-252-11 Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan; https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Frag... Harry Markopolos, Nobody Would Listen, https://www.amazon.com/No-One-Would-Listen-Financial/dp/0470... Michael Lewis, Liars Poker, https://www.amazon.com/Liars-Poker-Norton-Paperback-Michael/... "Leveraged Sellout", Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker, https://www.amazon.com/Damn-Feels-Good-Be-Banker/dp/14013096...
on “Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance?” ↗…articles covering them: 0. Enron - Senate committee concludes Enron was enabled by a systemic and catastrophic failure at the SEC[0]. Smartest Guys in the Room[1] is one of the better books about it 1. No One Would Listen - book from Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos[2]. He spent years laying out the entire Madoff case for the SEC yet their investigators kept signing off on Madoff. He has a lot of good detail on why…
on “The SEC has charged two initial coin offerings with defrauding investors” ↗In addition to film, I highly recommend the book published by the whistleblower Harry Markopolos, "No One Would Listen".[0] He spent the better part of a decade trying to alert the SEC to what he found. It was certainly a risky endeavour given how much money was at stake. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=harry+markopolos+no+one+would+list...
on “Money stolen by Bernie Madoff is still being found” ↗I recently finished "No One Would Listen" by Harry Markopolos who was a whistleblower who spent YEARS and resigned from his other jobs trying to alert the SEC about Bernie. It was pretty outrageous how the SEC passed the buck around interoffice…
on “SEC filed an emergency action against Silicon Sage Builders for securities fraud” ↗Harry Markopolos's No One Would Listen. A bit over the top in places, but entertaining.
on “Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?” ↗You'd probably find Harry Markopolous's No One Would Listen interesting. He's a bit of a nut, but he's the one who dobbed Madoff in repeatedly, to no effect, and he goes into great detail about the brokenness which makes this possible. For starters, there is…
on “EVE players abuse faction warfare to produce trillions of ISK” ↗…enough to jump through these hoops while buying themselves time to work out if they can clone your product. I tried to warn management (yes, really - even bought them copies of the book) but naturally no one would listen, and reading a book was too much like hard work. At some point MSFT simply ceased returning management's calls, and rolled out a similar product a while later. The company imploded not long after, not…
on “Revisiting the original Roomba and its simple architecture” ↗…characterization of Bernie Madoff. He knew he was running a scam. He was clearly lying in his marketing materials, saying his fund performed certain trades that they never did. (See Harry Markopolos' book, "No One Would Listen"; that's how Markopolos figured out it was a scam.) I think Madoff is, at the least, a borderline sociopath. (If not an outright one.) A sociopath may think they can get away with it, and no one will…
on “U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years” ↗…assess that, but he does support his reasoning, even if it's wrong. If he had said, "Based on my understanding of what a sociopath is, and the facts as I understand them from Harry Markopolos' book, "No One Would Listen", I think Madoff is a borderline sociopath at least, and possibly an outright sociopath." would you have taken as much offense? Does that sentence not express a useful point of view with respect to the…
on “U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years” ↗That the SEC investigators were completely incompetent helped him far more. See Harry Markopolos' book "No One Would Listen" for support of my "completely incompetent" claim: http://www.amazon.com/No-One-Would-Listen-Financial/dp/04709...
on “Be Careful when Speaking to Federal Agents - 18 U.S.C. Section 1001” ↗