How I Know JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) Was Complicit in the Biggest Ponzi Scheme Ever

Shah Gilani

I've said it before, and even though I've been threatened, in not so subtle ways, and been warned not to piss off certain people in power, I'm going to keep on saying it:

JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) is a criminal enterprise.

Yesterday (Monday) the mega enterprising bank began talks to settle civil and criminal charges that it ignored signs its banking client Bernie Madoff was a Ponzi-running, lying, cheating crook. (Which he was.)

It looks like the brazen bank will pay $2 billion to get out of jail free; free, of course being a relative charge. But I call it free because JPM has been posting record profits, and another multi-billion-dollar fine is unlikely to change that.

So what that they've paid about $20 billion in settlement fines in the last 12 months? They're still in business. They're in the business of making insane amounts of money to pay insane fines for insane criminal activity.

I'll say it again... JPMorgan Chase is a criminal enterprise.

For this new payoff, I mean payment, to the government, JPM's criminal ways were nodded to and shunted aside in a deferred prosecution agreement with the feds. The tradeoff will be such that JPM will swear it will do no evil (just the evil they will list, not any of the other evils they do that they don't have to list) and promise to be good while they're being watched. And if they don't do any more Ponzi-schemer aiding and abetting in the probably five years they will be watched, the deferred prosecution agreement dissolves. After that, they have a Whale of a party, probably over in London, where they hide other stuff.

I'm going to keep this short. There's another reason, besides not wanting to repeat myself over and over, and I'll tell you the other reason on Thursday.

So keeping this short, I'm just going to say one thing to explain JPMorgan's role in the biggest Ponzi scheme in history...

JPMorgan's (NYSE: JPM) Ponzi Scheme Role

In my expert opinion, it's just not possible that JPMorgan (and plenty of other intermediaries and feeder funds) didn't know that Madoff was running a scheme.

I didn't know anything about Madoff. No one ever asked me about him or what he might be doing to generate the returns he was generating. But any back-of-the envelope calculation of numbers - based on what he said he was doing - would have come up with a giant "does not compute" answer.

Here's the deal...

Shah Gilani

About the Author

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Shah Gilani boasts a financial pedigree unlike any other. He ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When options on the Standard & Poor's 100 began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah worked in "the pit" as a market maker.

The work he did laid the foundation for what would later become the VIX - to this day one of the most widely used indicators worldwide. After leaving Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB, Shah moved up to Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique firm. There he originated and ran a packaged fixed-income trading desk, and established that company's "listed" and OTC trading desks.

Shah founded a second hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003.

Shah's vast network of contacts includes the biggest players on Wall Street and in international finance. These contacts give him the real story - when others only get what the investment banks want them to see.

Today, as editor of Hyperdrive Portfolio, Shah presents his legion of subscribers with massive profit opportunities that result from paradigm shifts in the way we work, play, and live.

Shah is a frequent guest on CNBC, Forbes, and MarketWatch, and you can catch him every week on Fox Business's Varney & Co.

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