JPMadoff: The Unholy Alliance between America's Biggest Bank and America's Biggest Crook

by Helen Davis Chaitman, Lance Gotthoffer

We live in a society where a seventeen-year-old kid who robs a 7-Eleven of three hundred dollars goes to jail in a police van, while a thirty-four-year-old Wall Street banker who steals $1 billion from customers goes to Greenwich in his limousine.

A striking example of this state of injustice is the story of the illicit collaboration between Bernie Madoff and JPMorgan Chase. JPMadoff,written by the lawyers who represent 1,600 of the customers robbed by Bernie Madoff, offers a thoroughly documented account of the illegal conduct of the officers of JPMorgan Chase who watched, for years, as Madoff committed financial crimes. Why? Because they had the free use of Madoff’s billions of dollars of deposits. But this was not the only crime committed by officers of JPMorgan Chase. As the books lays out, JPMorgan Chase has become, like the Mafia, an institution that derives a substantial portion of its profits by violating the law.

Fans of Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, Pam Martens and Matt Taibbi will appreciate this factual exposition of the long-standing corruption and criminal activity deep inside the institution of JPMorgan Chase and the utter failure of the Obama administration to prosecute criminal bankers.

322 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 9, 2016

Reviews

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is 300+pages of damning indictments against JP Morgan for all manner of unethical and illegal behavior (not just their 20 years of turning a blind eye to Madoff's clearly fraudulent behavior while a client of their bank). The London Whale, manipulation of LIBOR, violations of RICO, mortgage fraud, all are detailed. It exposes with great detail and documentation the complicity of regulators and politicians and the difficulty that whistleblowers or shareholders have in bringing complaints/lawsuits against such a behemoth of a bank. The last chapter also makes some very strong suggestions for how to combat the problem in the US, some of the most specific I've seen. Helen Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer have done a public service through this book and I applaud them for it, as no other book, self published or otherwise to my knowledge has taken on with such courage any of the banks and their involvement in the themes that led to the financial crisis. They get 5 stars for this effort.
That being said, JP Madoff does not read like a book. The authors are lawyers, and it reads largely as their outline for a potential case...lots of bulletpoints, outlines, repetition, long citations of law. It is very very slow to get through and could have been trimmed by probably 50-100 pages if all redundancies were eliminated (we read the same facts over and over). It desperately needs an editor to more thoughtfully arrange the information so it doesn't merely become a reference book. As a "read" I would give it, at best, 2 stars, and hope that in the future a publishing house will make it into the gem it has the possibility of becoming.

[Dina · Rating 3 out of 5]

While our society is unforgiving of women who sell their bodies to support themselves, we are unbelievably tolerant of men who sell their souls to acquire massive fortunes.