Since Bernie Madoff with his invertors’ money, various well know people have been exposed to the glare of the media under different circumstances than they are normally used to. According to The Times: “Hollywood, the British Establishment, Wall Street, international sports stars, supermodels and the world’s richest investors have been hit. (The Russian mafia and Latin American drug barons believed to have also invested must have been scribbled on a separate pad.)” Oooh. Astonishingly, even Madoff’s own lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, and his accountant, David Friehling, were on the list!

Meanwhile, two other large scale frauds have been exposed recently. In the last couple of weeks, Spanish police arrested six men in connection with a suspected £360 million fraud in Langbar International, an AIM-listed cash shell that collapsed in 2005 leaving shareholders with big losses. Then yesterday, a businessman was arrested in Tokyo for allegedly conning thousands of victims into investing £1 billion in a pyramid scheme in one of Japan’s biggest financial scams.

As the r..depr..cession marches on, white collar defence lawyers will be rubbing their hands as more scandals emerge from collapsing businesses…