Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years prison today for his $65bn scam. Few have jumped to his defence (probably because what he did was indefensible on any level), but has he been given a tough deal?

I looked at some of the sentences handed out to other legendary criminal fraudsters and considered the value of their frauds and the lengths of their sentences. I think he has it easy.

Bernie Madoff Fraudster

He could take some comfort from the knowledge that if his Return on Sentence (ROS) matched that of Will Hoover, he would be in jail for a total of 500,000 years! I calculate ROS as the amount of money involved in a fraud or scam, divided by the number of years given to the perpetrator in sentencing.

No doubt he would far rather be sentenced using the ROS of Alves dos Reis who in 1930 was convicted of a scam that would be worth $150 trillion in today’s money. He got 20 years. Using my ROS calculation on this sentence, bad boy Bernie would be free after just 3 days.

So, is Bernie lucky or badly done to? I guess if you are going to be given a sentence that pretty much guarantees you are going to spend the rest of your life behind bars, you might as well break some records while you are at it.

Here are a few of the world’s biggests scamsters, or the world’s biggest losers when it came to sentencing. I have calculated ROS and also Bernie’s sentence if he had been lucky/unlucky enough to be sentenced on same basis:

Table drawn up while learning googledocs and watching Andy Murray win the latest game at Wimbledon ever. Some of the greatest scamsters and fraudsters – with sentences. NOTE the dollar values are approximated to today’s money. All sums are in thousands of dollars. $150 trillion is hard to fit into the columns otherwise.

Click on this link to see the table – it seems to have messed up the flow for the blog so it isn’t here now.

You can get more information, including the references I used, for these frauds and scams here. This is a Googledoc and I have left it open so that if you want to, you can add your favourite fraudsters.

As opening lines go it is up there with the best of them and when Shamus Husheer introduced himself earlier this year at a BLN  discussion dinner he certainly grabbed people’s attention. Describing himslf as a prolific inventor, he has spent much of his working life in instrumentation. He realised that while small changes in female body temperature were an incredibly accurate method or predicting female fertility, the methods available to track thee changes were primitive. He got to work and Cambridge Temperature Concepts was born.

We saw a prototype version of the device earlier this year (pictured).

Prototype Duofertility device. Possibly not the correct way to wear it.

This is where the magic happens...

It is great to see that this has hit the shops now.

No doubt Shamus is moving ever closer to his life’s work of leaving millions of women happily pregnant.

My Flickr Stream http://bit.ly/PuntCon

Photos from Puntcon V

My Flickr Stream http://bit.ly/PuntCon

Having spent two days in bed feeling terrible I had incredibly low expectations about my ability to engage in Bill Thomsons’s Puntcon event held this afternoon. I did not expect to get there, but the house was smelling bad and it seemed like a good opportunity to spend half an hour out of the house before I came home and flopped to feel sorry for myself. I took my son so I would have an excuse to leave early from the most disorganised conference I have ever attended.

Looking at the T-shirts that the guests were wearing it was clear that this was not going to be a trendy affair:

Bill’s Puntcon was the most interesting events I have been to since I moved to Cambridge and made me realise why I choose to live here.

I spent some time punting upriver with my son – fully engaged in his potty training , whilst talking to some amazing people – Peter – a Bristol based entrepreneur with a social media start up, Anil – ex-Xen source and now raising a £2million angel round for the most incredible game play I have heard and Jeremy, ex-Accenture and now settling in the Cameroon where he is setting up a Y-Combinator style incubator – biggest expense at present is a 500KB Internet connection at £ 150 per month. All three of them have incredible stories to tell and  I hope to follow up on all of their stories as they are all well worth telling.

You got too much...

... you're much too young.

We arrived at our destination, Grantchester Meadows, just at the point in the year that the sun shone hottest. Food was optional as most of it had melted but somehow some of the wine , Pimms and other liquid refreshmets remianed cold. We shared the field with some great cows. Unfortunately none of the cows were prepared to offer my son a ride on on their back as he wished but he busied himself making friends with small people and anyone that might offer him a short cut to a cows.

People and cows

Highlights of an unexpectedly great day include chatting to @Covert’s supervisor, getting burnt, the food sharing thing, everything Arthur did, meeting so many interesting and incredibly hot people, the cow-pat exfoliation, being challenged by some extraordinary people doing amazing things and most of all, breaking into my home grown new potatoes when I got home.

What did we think?

The Geekosphere is buzzing with talk about the forthcoming visit by the Traveling Geeks as part of their UK tour. Looking like there is a great line up of activities all week but we hear that there might be some time on the final Saturday for a bit of a play.

Click here for the Geek itinerary.

There will also be an informal tweetup meeting on the steps of the Fitzwilliam Museum at 13.00 on Saturday 11th July.

Lots to do and I am sure it would be nice for the geeks to meet some interesting Cambridge types. I also thought it might be interesting for them to see some of the stuff that goes on within 15 minutes walk or so of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Here are some of my pictures from the past couple of weeks that might offer a flavour of Cambridge life outside the labs and start up offices…

Suicide Sunday Cricket Match

May Bumps Action

Magdalene May Ball tickets

Alternative uses for a punt

Magadalene May Ball Survivors. 6.10 am

Punting with bicycles - typical Cambridge sight

The River Bank Club

Catching Weill's Disease

No need to book for this one. After a week of hard travel and partying, it should be a low key affair for the TGs but all are welcome.

Our next BLN CFO Breakfast Brainstorm will be held on 8th July from 8.00 am at the Trinity Centre, Cambridge Science Park.

The BLN CFO Breakfast Brainstorm is a high-level peer-to-peer discussion forum for individuals leading the finance function in some of the region’s most admired companies. We expect approximately 20 attendees, comprising successful CFOs and rising stars will attend under the Chatham House Rule. The programme exists to help CFOs  network, learn from each other, share best practice and advance the role of the CFO in high growth companies in a relaxed, entertaining and facilitated environment.

The BLN CFO Breakfast Brainstorms have already included some of the most experienced public and private company CFOs and FDs in the region. Attendees at our two most recent events include Domino, nCipher, Plastic Logic, AlertMe, Nujira, Zeus, Xaar and Amino Telecommunications and other rising stars.

This event will feature, following requests from previous attendees, a guest speaker, Alex van Someren. Alex will share some of his thoughts on the characteristics of the best CFOs and how they can manage their CEOs effectively.

Alex van Someren, serial entrepreneur and guest speaker

Alex is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded ANT Ltd, now ANT plc, in 1990 to produce networking products including Web Browser software later licensed to the Oracle Corporation. ANT plc was listed on the London AIM market in 2005 and is now positioned in the embedded software market for IPTV.

In 1996 he co-founded nCipher with venture capital backing to develop internet security products using cryptography. nCipher plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 and counted major banking, finance and government among its customers around the world. It was sold to Thales SA in 2008 and returned more than £150 million to shareholders.

Alex lives in Cambridge with his wife and three children, where he is an active member of the local entrepreneurial community. He is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

The BLN CFO Breakfast Brainstorms have been greeted by CFOs as a welcome and much needed initiative to facilitate the development of the strategic finance function in organisations – as well as offering a nice breakfast and a chance to meet fellow finance professionals.

Attendance at this event is free to qualified CFOs and FDs. For further information please contact us at: Events@TheBLN.com

Supporters

• BDO Stoy Hayward
• Bidwells/Cambridge Science Park

Feedback from previous events: