Financial gain can be a slippery slope. All too often, success seems to lead to greed, and greed, of course, is the great corrupter. Some now-notorious individuals in the world of finance found opportunity presenting itself and temptation too much to resist. Obviously, when it comes to the stock market, the stakes are high.

And for would-be swindlers, though the rewards may be great, so too are the risks — for their victims if not for themselves. Because he was so young, Minkow was thrust into the media spotlight. He even appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. By the time he was 19, Minkow had launched his company on the stock market.

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The problem was that Minkow financed ZZZZ Best illegally, using everything from check-kiting schemes to fraudulent credit card charges and dodgy loans from criminals.

And while Minkow himself became a preacher when he got out of prison, he was allegedly soon back to his swindling ways.

Inmembers of his church accused him of all kinds of scams, leading to an FBI investigation. In SeptemberKozlowski and other company executives were sentenced to 25 years in prison. Nevertheless, Kozlowski was eventually granted work release after serving only seven years of his term. Egyptian scammer and stock picker Anthony Elgindy worked in cahoots with a corrupt FBI agent named Jeffrey Royer.

Meanwhile, he also used his website, Anthonypacific. According to prosecutors, Elgindy went as far as using the site to blackmail the targets of the negative publicity he was spreading.

Elgindy was charged in After four months in court, he was acquitted of most of the 32 charges he faced but was convicted of inside trading. The judge presiding over the case took a hard line with Elgindy and sentenced him to nine years in jail.

Hiromasa Ezoe was the chairman of Japanese human resources and classifieds company Recruit. But before Recruit subsidiary company Cosmos went public inHiromasa illegally allowed high-profile figures, including top-ranking politicians, access to almost a million Cosmos shares. When the company was then offered publicly, the value of the shares shot through the roof, which translated into a huge amount of shady profit. At first, only lesser officials admitted involvement in the scandal, earning money on webanswers the resignations began to snowball, including those of some work from home videokeman the most powerful men in the country.

Soon, people had been implicated for their involvement in the insider-trading scheme, and many top officials stepped down — among them the finance minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, and Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita. Japan was shaken to the core, and the stock market fell by 40 percent in A British analyst living in Japan says the Japanese now equate stock trading with gambling.

He was given a suspended sentence.

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In the mids, Michael Milken, a. But insider trading brought the house down and left Drexel fighting bankruptcy. In MarchMilken was charged with an astounding 98 counts of fraud and racketeering.

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According to The New York Timeshis biggest mistake was providing biggest stock market frauds company of stock trader Ivan Boesky with huge sums of money.

InBoesky had been implicated in a bigger insider trading inquiry and pleaded guilty, and part of his deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission SEC was to roll over on Milken. With this new information on Milken, the SEC launched an investigation into Drexel. However, Milken played it smart and pleaded guilty to six lesser charges out of the He was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released a mere 22 months later.

Inbillionaire Sri Lankan-American businessman Plan de trading forex Rajaratnam co-founded hedge fund management company Galleon Group. In Octoberhe was arrested and charged with leading a team of insider traders. According to authorities, between andRajaratnam made his money by trading work from home videokeman stocks, with the help of his network of contacts.

The stocks themselves included those of companies such as Google, eBay, Hilton Worldwide and Goldman Sachs. In Maya jury found Rajaratman guilty of 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud. And in October the same year, he received a sentence of 11 years in prison. At the time, his was the longest jail term ever imposed for insider trading. The problem was, however, that Tang was using stocks as collateral for loans. Businessman Andrew Fastow served as chief financial officer for disgraced Texas energy giant Enron from until — when the company imploded.

In OctoberFastow was indicted on 78 charges, including offences such as fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. Then in Januaryhe entered a plea of guilty and agreed to offer information on other Enron executives in order to lessen his own sentence. WorldCom chief financial officer Scott Sullivan, whom Ebbers claims masterminded the entire scam, pointed his finger at Ebbers. It is still considered the largest financial fraud in the history of the United States.

Madoff offered seemingly low-risk, high-return investments that should have set alarm bells ringing: In Juneyear-old Madoff was sentenced to years in prison on 11 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft.

When news of the scandal broke, Madoff and his wife purportedly attempted to commit suicide by taking pills. Master of Finance Degrees. Find Your Degree 1 Select a Degree Level. Rankings Top 25 Most Affordable Online Master of Finance Degree Programs Top 50 Most Affordable Online MBA in Finance Degree Programs 50 Great Small Colleges for an Accounting and Finance Degree 20 Best Online Master of Finance Degree Programs 25 Great Master of Financial Engineering Programs The 30 Best Master of Finance Degree Programs.

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