New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charged Merkin with civil fraud for steering many of his clients to invest with Madoff. According the the charges, Merkin steered $2.4 billion of his client’s funds to Madoff, all the while ignoring “glaring red flags” that should have told him the investments weren’t safe. For his part, Merkin earned $470 million in incentive and management fees.

“Merkin duped individual investors, non-profits, and charities into believing he was responsibly managing their investments, when in actuality he was dumping them into history’s largest Ponzi scheme,” Cuomo stated at a press conference.

Merkin, 55, has denied wrongdoing. He said he was “absolutely shocked” to learn about Madoff’s scheme. His lawyer, Andrew Levander, said he would “vigorously defend” his client against court action.

Merkin is already being sued by New York University and Mort Zuckerman over his role in the scheme.

Ezra Merkin ran both the Gabriel Capital and Ariel Fund, which have been shut down. Both are now said to have operated as “feeder funds” that solicited funds for Madoff in return for large fees. Cuomo alleged that Merkin presented himself to clients as an “investing guru” but was only a “master marketer.” Cuomo’s written statement that accompanied the charges went so far as to say that Merkin realized professional investors were questioning “Madoff’s uncommonly steady returns, there were fundamental questions about Madoff’s money management business that suggested fraud.”

Cuomo stated that Merkin had two articles that questioned Madoff’s investments in his files.

Levander said that Merkin had done his due diligence, and found nothing untoward about Madoff.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Merkin’s due diligence, just like the detailed investigations performed by countless others, including regulators, was thwarted by the intricate, fraudulent scheme perpetrated by Madoff,” he said.

According to a document filed at the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, US Prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of Madoff’s homes, cars, boats, securities, silverware and a piano that were believed to be paid for with gains from his illegal business activities.

Bernard Madoff is accused of swindling as much as $65 billion dollars from numerous investors. His scheme didn’t discriminate – he took from actors, charitable organizations and Holocaust survivors.

Madoff took new investment dollars to pay off earlier investors. When the credit market imploded and Madoff couldn’t tap into new money to cover the withdrawal requests of his clients, his fraudulent investment company came undone.

Madoff was denied bail and is currently in jail awaiting sentencing, scheduled to take place on June 16, 2009.

At that time Madoff told his sons that he had engineered a $50 billion fraud. Now prosecutors have upped the amount to $64.8 billion. The actual amount of money stolen is unknown. Investigators are using numbers that include probably false profits that Madoff included in his documents.

So far investigators have only recovered $1 billion.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt said that there was no plea agreement with Madoff and that the sentence could be 150 years.

Madoff is expected to plead guilty on Thursday.

Madoff, the former Chairman of NASDAQ, has been under house arrest since December 2008.

On Friday US District Judge Denny Chin invited victims to attend court this Thursday, when Madoff is expected to enter his “Guilty” plea.

It’s widely being speculated that Madoff is likely to enter into a “plea agreement” in order to minimize his legal damages. After his guilty plea, it’s expected that the District Attorney will hit the disgraced financier with even more charges.

“Madoff is about to enter his guilty plea,” SEC attorney Jacob Frenken said. “A criminal information is a consented-to criminal charge used to enter a guilty plea.”

The siren song of safety and a decent return was enough to attract investors who were concerned with preservation of capital. One such investor was Pedro, a 62 year old from Mexico City. The software engineer put $150,000 into Stanford International CDs.

“Security was the key aspect,” he said “They told me that they had insurance. The broker told me not to worry and that the bank was safe.”

Confusion from customers was likely due to the fact that bank CDs that are FDIC-insured carry a $250,000 guarantee from the government. The CDs being marketed by Stanford held no such guarantee.

The SEC has now charged Stanford, 58, with running a “massive, ongoing fraud.” Prosecutors have received numerous complaints about Allen, but didn’t act until publicity from the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme caused them to intensify efforts.

The SEC began a formal probe of Stanford’s activities in October 2006 that culminated in charges being brought against him on February 17th.

The SEC says delays in the case were often a result of jurisdictional problems related to the complexity of the scheme.

The company has been sued several times for operating a Ponzi scheme. They settled the cases.

“You are both a captive regulator and a failed regulator,” said Markopolos in his testimony to a U.S. House subcommittee.

Markopolos said he spent nine years trying to get the SEC interested in Madoff’s doings. He also stated they couldn’t understand the scheme because of the complex financial instruments involved.

“The SEC was never capable of catching Mr. Madoff,” Markopolos said.

Markopolos also said more “feeder funds” are out there, but haven’t come out of the woodwork just yet.

“My team was out there in the field talking to the Madoff feeder funds and identifying who they were,” he said. “There are 12 more out there lying low in the weeds in Europe that you have not heard of yet.”

Bartz, 60, will replace Jerry Yang – one of the companies co-founders.

Jerry Yang has been criticized for his inability to make critical decisions regarding the company due to ‘emotional ties’ to the brand.

In recent years Yahoo has had stiff competition from other internet companies like Google and has turned down offers to be bought out by Microsoft.

Bartz holds a BA degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and is on the Board of Directors for Cisco Systems, Intel and still serves as executive Chairman at Autodesk.

Her appointment has yet to be formally announced. Yahoo said that Jerry Yang will step down as soon as the new CEO is officially named.

Officials investigating the case said that Schrenker fled the Harpersville, Alabama area on a red motorcycle that he had in storage under an assumed name. Authorities said they searched the storage unit and found the 2008 Yamaha streetbike missing late Monday.

Authorities in several states are now searching for the Indianapolis, Indiana based money manager that’s currently under investigation for securities fraud in the state. The FBI and U.S. Marshals have joined in on the manhunt.

Tom Britt, a friend of Schrenker, told CNN, “Why someone would jump out of a plane and leave it on autopilot with his training and his background is beyond me. There’s no reason for him to do it other than trying to stage something.”

Britt also disclosed that he received an Email from someone claiming to be Schrenkel that hinted he might try to commit suicide.

Just like his faulty financial advice at Heritage Wealth Management, his attempt to fake his own death has got him in even more trouble and facing more charges for maliciously crashing an aircraft in a residential area.

On Monday Indiana officials froze all of his assets in an effort to protect investors in his business dealings.

His wife, Michelle, filed for divorce from him on December 30, 2008. They have three children.

The judge has added certain restrictions to Madoff’s bail. One new one is “restrictions of transfer of all property whatsoever, wherever located” belonging to Madoff.”

Since Madoff sent valuable jewelry to his family members, the judge made certain it won’t happen again anytime soon. Madoff must now compile a “valuable portable items” and be subjected to a twice weekly audit of the items.

Madoff currently faces up to twenty years in prison if convicted of all charges.

The prosecutors say he’s responsible for sending $1 million worth of jewelry to family members, after he’d been arrested for his massive Ponzi scheme. Not only that, but the man represents the greatest flight risk since the Spruce Goose. He’s old, he may have millions of dollars in hidden assets, and he’s facing a long jail term (when you’re over 70 any prison sentence could be for the rest of your life), and he’s a scammer. Of course there’s a chance he might decide to seek greener pastures in some remote part of the world that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

“The need for detention in this case is clear,” the prosecution wrote.

They told the judge that Madoff “has admitted to having perpetrated one of the largest frauds in history.” His fraud is a Ponzi scheme with “losses in the tens of billions of dollars.”

Madoff lawyers responded by saying that Bernie didn’t understand the rules of his probation and he’d be willing to agree to tighter restrictions to keep himself out of jail.

So far it hasn’t moved the judge to revoke bail and place Madoff in jail. Despite a non-stop investigation there hasn’t been a single word of exactly how much Madoff may have taken from investors and what became of the assets. It appears likely that investors won’t recover a red cent from Madoff. These victims must be outraged to think Madoff is sending jewelry worth millions through the mail while their own fortunes have been destroyed.

To them it must appear that “personal mementos” such as Rolex watches were purchased with their money. It must also seem like he’s trying to hide the asset to avoid repaying his victims.

Today Barack Obama spoke about the public markets.

“Wall Street has not worked, our regulatory system has not worked the way it’s supposed to,” Obama told CNBC. He vowed a “substantial overhaul” of US financial markets.”

“So it’s going to be a substantial overhaul. We’re going to have better enforcement, better oversight, better disclosure, increased transparency.”

The time for enforcement, oversight, disclosure, and increased transparency is long overdue. The case of Bernard Madoff illustrates the point clearly.