In the depths of the banking crisis last year, a new financial scandal broke. Respected Wall Street trader Bernard Madoff was arrested after calmly confessing to running the world's biggest Ponzi scheme.Creating an almost mythical status for himself as a financial genius, he took money from investors all over the world to invest, but in reality the cash was simply going into a bank account, with money from new investors going to pay off older clients.
Victims included Hollywood celebrities such as Kevin Bacon and Steven Spielberg, banks, and the super-wealthy, but many ordinary families in the US also lost their life savings in the scam.
By admitting all his crimes and refusing to blame anyone else, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison in June, and did not face a trial.
But without a trial, many questions have been left unanswered. How did he fool so many people, for so long? Why didn't the US authorities realise earlier he was operating a massive fraud right under their noses?
And the question asked most frequently by his victims: where's the money gone?
This is an in-depth investigation that attempts to answer these questions, detailing a fascinating history of the boom years on Wall Street before the bust.
