SubscribeThe disruption that he caused to his employees - legitimate hard working people - has been overshadowed and underrepresented . . . . The Madoff employees were also victimized after years of hard work and dedication.
Thank you,
Ken Hutchinson
My name is Barry Kellogg, age 66. Upon retirement after 30 plus years of employment with Occidental Petroleum Corporation I converted my 401K to a Traditional IRA and placed it with the Agile Group, LLC for investment in several "funds of funds". This IRA represented substantially all of my life savings. After review of several brokerage companies for placement of my savings, I selected Agile Group, LLC because of their conservative approach that was to the best of my knowledge based on wealth preservation rather than promising outrageous returns.On p. 104, Richard Johnson, another Agile Funds investor:
I am a recently retired blue collar utility plant worker. I am 69 years old. ALL of my 401k funds and over 80% of my life savings have, for all I know, evaporated due to two white collar crooks. Mr. Madoff and a Mr. Petters.Several statements mention the ironically-named "Agile Safety Fund."
My savings and 401k amounted to nearly $600,000.00. I have not only lost nearly all my savings but now I can't account for my losses when I file my yearly Income Taxes. ...
I worked all my life and served in the U.S. Army. I think I have been a very good and productive citizen. And now ... well I don't feel so proud of being a good and loyal citizen. I feel cheated and abandoned.
Our loss has deeply affected our lives. I am 80 years old and my wife of 54 years is 79. We have cut our expenditures to those absolutely necessary and I have found employment as a grocery store meat clerk, which pays $8.39 per hour. It is difficult work and the pay is small, but it is something.Natalie Erger, p. 19:
My husband is 78 years old. His father died when he was 16. He served his country in the Korean War. He retired from his own business. His entire IRA was invested with Bernard Madoff. [After the fraud was discovered:] He didn't waste any time. He went to work doing telephone customer sales for commission only. He worked from 7:30 am until 8:30 pm six days a week. He was terminated after three months because he did not make the quota of sales they projected. He is now trying to do hosting at a local bagel store.Donald Collins, page 86:
My wife and I are investors in Agile. All of our funds have been put on hold since the end of September 2008. They have control of all of our life savings accumulated over my 40-year career as a petroleum geologist and production manager. We lived very frugally and saved approximately $950,000. I do not have a pension. All of it was in 401-k's and rolled over to IRA's with Agile. We have no income other than our Social Security. We are just barely making it. I have cashed in a life insurance policy and I am trying to sell a car. I will be 78 April first and no one will hire me to do anything. My wife is 71.Virginia Buczek, p. 82:
My husband Charles is 51 years old and I am 57. Chuck has been an automotive mechanic for the past 32 years and I was a stay at home mom. Chuck's income in 1983 was $24,000. We saved our money, never owned a new car, and bought some rental houses over a number of years by saving our tax returns and living very frugally. We did all of the work from cleaning bathtubs to putting on new roofs ourselves. We knew that Chuck would only be able to work as a mechanic for a limited amount of time. It is very physically demanding is not a job for an old man. He always said, "There is a reason you don't see any old mechanics."
He had always planned on being in a position of retiring by the time our children had finished college or to have enough savings to pay the bills and live if he had to quit earlier. As he foresaw, he had to have back surgery in 2001. He was 30% disabled after the surgery, but returned to work as soon as possible still as a mechanic. We worked even harder to save and plan for his retirement. He had a torn ligament in each knee and another ruptured disk in his back when he quit working, February 8, 2008. We thought we had saved enough money to pay for the rest of the college tuition and live comfortably. I cannot express the disappointment we have experienced over the last six months. Thirty years of back breaking labor, twelve hour work days (mechanics are paid on the number of billable hours, not by the time spend at the shop), weekends and late evenings cleaning and repairing the damage caused by our renters, living within our means (we still have never had a new car, cable TV, or paid anyone to do anything for us, we have done everything ourselves). We believed that if we were prudent and saved as much as possible we would not have to worry when the time came that Chuck could no longer work.
To know that this good, caring, hardworking man has had his retirement stolen by people who lived a lifestyle of such utter luxury, with such absolute indifference to the lifetime of hard work they were stealing from honest people is appalling. He cannot go back to work as a mechanic; it would take the rest of our lives to save the money that was stolen from us. The work we (our three children, Chuck and I) put into our rentals over the years has been wasted and squandered by those unwilling to do manual labor or honestly earn a dollar but used their positions to steal from hard working, honest, responsible citizens.
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b) So many of these are sad stories - I feel truly bad for these victims and I do not prescribe to 'the public be suckered' mentality that is in the investment world. Yeah - there's some responsibility to diversify and research investment choices, etc. - but it truly sounds like this guy suckered people hard and deserves the hard time!
posted by mctsonic at 7:07 PM on June 15, 2009