The Bernard Madoff-Delos Angeles parallelism

The massive extent of the money-bilking by the Legacy Group of Cesar delos Angeles is almost on-all-fours with that plotted by Wall Street conman Bernard Madoff.

Other than the multi-billion dollars of the Madoff larceny vis-à-vis Delos Angeles’ scam in pesos also victimizing gullible thousands, Madoff has one investor in suicide pricking his conscience. God forbid, none of Legacy victims has chosen such desperate shortcut.

Another difference is, on discovery of the Madoff con job, he was erelong hied to court, tried, and convicted and put behind bars, as is wont in US justice system. Delos Angeles and his Legacy cohorts are still scot-free. A Filipino-style justice long delayed, as usual.

Madoff’s modus operandi remain so far vague and cryptic, but one thing given, as in similar “one-two-three” pyramid schemes in bilking innocent investors – nonetheless get-rich-quick chance takers – has been to entice them with overblown returns of their capital much bigger than banking and/or business profits.

In retrospect, before Madoff there was Charles Ponzi, a Boston businessman, who came up with his ploy – now ignominiously called the “Ponzi scheme” – who glibly out-talked the naive into ponying up with their money by bloated return promises, say, 50% profit in two or three months. Before Ponzi, there used to be such “easy money” swindlers, like New Yorker William Miller who fleeced the chance takers sometime in late 19th century. And after Ponzi, came Reed Slatkin in 2003, followed by Minnesota con artist Tom Peters who milked some $3.5 B, so TIME magazine recalls.

The “Ponzi scheme” and refined by Madoff recently, is the fine-tuned “pyramid” deceit of yore. Hedge-fund investors, idle money rich, miserly penny-savers, and even hard-earner retirees who seek additional earnings from their turnip-like retirement nest eggs and meager pensions, could not resist the “double-your-money” in just a short period.

The common SOP of “ponzi” operators is outsized returns in postdated checks that are paid off every maturity as hefty dividends, usually from capital sucked from newly conned investors. Or, even from a portion of the capital of earlier entrants. As dividend checks being paid off become “regular”, the investors are “encouraged” to put up additional capital. And so on, until the final bust when the checks begin to bounce, depending upon the final plot of the swindler.

 The Legacy cabal orchestrated by Delos Angeles is not a new scam. In fact, in Cebu there was that Korean “kiting” fraud victimizing many Cebuano investors. Likewise, some rural banks before Legacy, also offered hefty interests that commercial/savings banks couldn’t match.

 Lately there have been commercial banks offering “double-your-money” deposit over a period of five years, under certain restrictions. Small depositors, like, retirees and pensioners living on their up-keep from monthly interests, often balk from such offer.

As regards the Legacy Group pyramiding ploy, delos Angeles employed more clever, enterprising, and uncanny initiative as to cover all possible enticements and inducements. He had an answer for every possible financial need, such as, by straight rural banking with excessive interests, purchase of motorcycles, pre-need plans on study scholarships, insurance, money market, and outright investments doubling the money for a short period of three years.

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