Failing Upward: Andrés Piedrahíta's Previous Track Record

by Rachelle Hruska · February 3, 2009

    [The very good looking Piedrahíta Family Christmas Card]

    Apparently Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme wasn't the first time social businessman Andrés Piedrahíta, son-in-law to Walter Noel and Europe salesman for Fairfield Greenwich Group sent investors coin to money heaven.  Albeit the previous time wasn't via a Ponzi,  his track record shows a bewildering pattern of failing upward.  Moreover, did Walter not even perform due diligence on his own employees (aka son-in-laws...aka conflict of interest)?  A tipster writes:

    "I thought you would be interested in knowing that this is not the first time that his son-in-law Andres Piedrahita has lost investors' money. In 1982/1983 he was working at a Wall Street firm called Balfour MacLaine which was a commodity futures trading company (it has now withdrawn from that business). Piedrahita was again selling to rich individuals, such as Samuel Botero (son of the famous painter), a highly leveraged futures fund called TAPMAN. It made all the same promises as Madoff and had the same result (though not through fraud), and his investors lost all their money. Back then it was only mere $millions. I know this first hand as I worked next to him.

    Perhaps the Internet is now making such losses and track records much more visible.  A salesman can't just pack his bags, go to another country, and use his social connections to grease another fund.  Perhaps we are now going to see acccoutability?