Economic crime: the Madoff case

The aim of our work is to contribute, within the broad and articulated field of criminological sciences, with particular ref- erence to economic crimes, to the knowledge of a specific financial fraud defined by specialists as the “Ponzi scheme”, and to the mechanisms underlying this type of crime.We first examine the economic and financial characteristics of the Ponzi scheme, through a thorough review of the international literature. Afterwards, we define a potential criminological profile of the fraudster based on a transversal analysis of three cases of implementation of a Ponzi scheme, with particular reference to the Madoff case. Furthermore, we develop a victimological study on the objectives and the victims’ most common re- curring features of the “Ponzi scheme” crime. Finally, some proposals of preventative and antagonistic tools to counteract this type of crime are introduced.