CHRONOLOGY: Madoff scandal: One of history's largest swindles

Mar 11, 2009, 0:08 GMT

New York - The decades-long Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff is one of the largest frauds in financial history.

Past investors were paid enticing returns from money paid in by new investors, until last year's steep decline in stocks and other assets unravelled the swindle:

- December 11, 2008: Madoff admits fraud to his two sons, who also worked at his firm, Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities. The 70- year-old trader estimates losses at 50 billion dollars. He intends to distribute the 200 to 300 million dollars left in the firm's possession to employees, relatives and friends. The sons stop him and turn him in to investigators. That same night, police officers arrest Madoff at his upscale Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan.

- December 12: Madoff is released on 10 million dollars bail. In their search, investigators find in his desk about 100 signed checks for more than 173 million dollars.

- December 13: First victims are identified, and the list grows daily. In Europe, losers include Spain's Banco Santander, Austria's Bank Medici, Switzerland's UBP and Britain's HSBC.

- December 16: The US Securities and Exchange Commission admits grave mistakes in its failure to thoroughly investigate repeated tips and reports that something was amiss with Madoff, whose reported earnings defied all patterns of growth and decline on Wall Street. Critics say he was protected by his insider role from 50 years as a Wall Street trader and as one-time head of the high-tech Nasdaq stock exchange.

- December 17: Madoff placed under house arrest and must wear an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor his movements.

- December 22: French finance manager Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, 65, takes his life in his New York office while facing 1.4 billion dollars in losses for his hedge fund Access International Advisors.

- January 5, 2009: Prosecutors seek to revoke Madoff's bail after he and his wife violate the court-ordered asset freeze by mailing jewelry valued at 1 million dollars to relatives.

- January 12: A judge refuses prosecution request to put Madoff behind bars, remands him to house arrest amid growing public anger over Madoff scandal.

- February 2: Other Ponzi schemes are uncovered as the global finance system plunges into recession. In Cairo, prosecutors charge that Nabil al-Boushi, managing director of Optima Global Holdings, defrauded Egyptian investors of 13 million US dollars to pay off disgruntled investors in the United Arab Emirates.

- February 4: Madoff's client list becomes public. Included are Germany's Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Dresdner Bank and Bayerische Landesbank, actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, director Steven Spielberg, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, actor Kevin Bacon, the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, and Elie Wiesel and his wife's entire life savings.

- February 11: Prosecution delays plea hearing to second week in March, amid reports that Madoff's wife, Ruth, withdrew 15.5 million dollars from a separate Madoff fund shortly before the scandal unravelled, including 10 million dollars one day before his arrest.

- February 14: Former British soldier William Foxton, 65, who lost an arm in military service, shoots himself over the loss of his life savings of 1 million dollars, which he had invested in two hedge funds that in turn had poured the money into Madoff's fund.

- February 19: Latin American countries move to stem losses from a scandal centered on Texas billionaire Robert Allen Stanford and his Antigua-based bank. US regulators charge that Stanford ran a 'massive, ongoing fraud' that bled 8 billion dollars from investors in the US and abroad.

- March 10: In federal court, prosecutors note that Madoff faces a 150-year sentence on 11 charges. His lawyer says that Madoff is to plea guilty to the charges on March 12.