WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO These scumbags stealing from small investors better clean up their act............
The Awesome, Mind-Boggling Tale of Sam Israel and the Shadow Markets
Tim Knight from Slope of Hope's picture
Submitted by Tim Knight from Slope of Hope on 08/22/2012 19:35 -0400
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I just finished reading Octopus by Guy Lawson, and it's one of those rare books that fit the "I Couldn't Put It Down" category, much like Den of Thieves, published in 1992. It is the tale of Sam Israel, whom you may remember in 2006 was on the lam from his failed hedge fund/Ponzi scheme. He faked his suicide, was captured, and is now hanging out for the next couple of decades (with none other than Bernie Madoff) in a state prison named, of all things, Valhalla.
Israel was born into a very wealthy family that made its fortune in commodities trading. Even as a young
0822-israelOctopus man, he wanted to be a successful trader on Wall Street and impress his hard-to-please father that he could truly make it in the brutal world of trading.
He began work in the 1980s, working at the bottom of the totem pole at the New York Stock Exchange. He did whatever menial tasks were available, serving as a "runner" and gopher, and the book details his climb up through the trading ranks - - by 1987, serving as a trader for a relatively prominent firm (which was badly damaged in the 1987 crash). Israel actually did quite well during the crash, and after working for a couple of other funds in the ensuing years, he decided to create a fund of his own with two other men - - one of them, Jimmy Marquez, who himself had launched a fund whose losses were so severe that he had to shut it down, and another, Dan Marino, a chubby, almost-deaf accountant who was there to keep (and, later, cook) the books.
Israel was, in a way, ahead of the curve since he wanted to base his orders on a very primitive (and today what would be considered ungodly slow) version of high-speed trading. His "Forward Propogation" program would predict the next move of the market with 86% accuracy, he claimed, and for virtually the entire history of the newly-christened Bayou fund, Forward Propogation was the centerpiece of their technological edge in
LONG ONE,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-08-22/awesome-mind-boggling-tale-sam-israel-and-shadow-markets?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
adr
adr's picture
Lived like a king on bullshit money for a couple decades and gets 22 years.
You want to fix the con. Kill the bastards five minutes after conviction.
Sam Israel didn't do anything different than 90% of every other hedge fund out there.
Every single one is a scam to take money from the many and give it to the few.
Ahhh, the market. The reverse Robin Hood.
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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