I don’t actually know the extent to which Bernie Madoff actually was conscious that he was lying to people. What I do know is that he ran a pyramid scheme.
The eponymous Charles Ponzi had a plausible arbitrage idea backing his famous scheme; it’s not unlikely that he was already in over his head (and therefore desperately trying to make himself believe he’d find some other way to make his investors whole) by the time he found out that transaction costs made the whole thing impractical.
The eponymous Charles Ponzi had a plausible arbitrage idea backing his famous scheme; it’s not unlikely that he was already in over his head (and therefore desperately trying to make himself believe he’d find some other way to make his investors whole) by the time he found out that transaction costs made the whole thing impractical.