Does no one in the industry know about Madoff's scam? Apparently not, even among his investors, many of them are aware of the abnormal returns of Madoff's financial products.

Why do people still buy it? Because Madoff has been trying to maintain this scam for more than a decade, customers who can realize that something is wrong will keep buying it in order to pursue stable high returns.

They believe that they will not have problems during their purchase period and that they will be able to escape the catastrophe.

During the bursting of the Nasdaq bubble, Madoff maintained his credibility, which made his customers trust him even more.

Clients who are well-versed in the financial industry believe that Madoff, as the former chairman of the NASDAQ, has inside information, and successfully escaped the top or even shorted backhand before the crisis to obtain excess returns.

As a result, Madoff's investment firm not only did not shrink in size after the Nasdaq bubble burst, but grew by a large margin.

Schulman also holds a similar idea, in his opinion, with an interest rate of more than 12, maybe Madoff can really achieve an average annualized rate of return of more than 12%, and even an investment master at the level of Warren Buffett.

It's just that in the year when the revenue is less than 12%, the revenue of previous years is used to make up for the loss of customers.

Schulman thinks that even if it is a Ponzi scheme spread through the grapevine, with Madoff's connections and resume, it is not difficult to achieve a yield of about 7%.

So even if it's a Ponzi scheme, judging by the amount of money, this scam can be played for a long time.

But what Schulman didn't expect was that after Madoff got the money, he only knew that it was in the bank and didn't do anything, and the hole would be pierced faster than he imagined.

Things like the in-depth cooperation between the Internet and the financial industry are very popular on Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and for Wall Street financial institutions, this can greatly save labor costs.

We made a mistake in the previous gameplay, and the combination of finance and the Internet is right, but we have not gained traffic in the past and have not gained the trust of users.

Anyone with a discerning eye can see that the mobile APP is the key to the fire of Yu Bao, and if it is NewPay on the computer, Yu Bao can also be sold, but it will definitely not be as popular as it is now, and the first reaction of everyone with spare money is to put it in Yu Bao.

For Internet giants, this is a new opportunity, how high the financial profit is, everyone knows that financial money is much faster than physical money, otherwise why should finance stand at the top of the industry and devour flesh and blood from other walks of life?

Now tell them that as Internet upstarts, you are also qualified to go to the territory of the old money to make money, and even faster than the old money, can these Internet companies in Silicon Valley not be impressed?

Therefore, the news of the cooperation with Madoff Investment Company spread quickly.

"Robin, I've partnered with Madoff Securities, and according to my sources, they're going to sell financial products from Madoff." George Reyes said.

George Reyes is the treasurer of Baidu, having worked at Sun Personal Computer Co., Ltd. before joining Baidu.

His relationship with Madoff is that Madoff Investments started out in the '60s as a specialized market maker, and stocks with a share price of less than 1 cent were called microstocks, and they weren't listed on any major stock exchanges, and if you wanted to buy them, you had to go to specialized companies, and Madoff Investments was such a company at the time.

At the time, Sun PC was a micro-stock, and George Reyes worked at Sun with investors who bought shares in Sun PC through Madoff.

Sun PC's share price rose from 1 cent to $250 during the dot-com bubble, making it a legend within a micro-cap.

As the most classic publicity case of Madoff Securities Investment Company in the early days, George Reyes and Madoff got to know each other, and the private relationship between the two parties can be described as good.

George didn't need to introduce Madoff to Robin, who had also worked on Wall Street, so he knew the legend.

"Is it possible for us to work with Madoff? Launching Madoff's wealth management products on Baidu Pay? Robin interrupted George's introduction to Madoff and asked directly.

He also realized that this was an opportunity, and when he started selling wealth management products with interest rates of more than 10%, Yu'e Bao's customers were sucked away, but more of them were originally owned by companies with smaller market shares.

After all the major Internet companies went down to electronic payment, Baidu also ended up with electronic payment, spending $50 million to acquire an electronic payment company, and renamed the electronic payment Baidu Pay.

Baidu's strong technical capabilities have enabled them to quickly develop e-payment applications that are available on all platforms.

But users won't choose to adopt your e-payment app because of the power of your technology.

Electronic payment as the most critical part of the mobile Internet, Baidu no matter what, Baidu does not want to give up this battlefield, especially after the Internet and finance can be linked together through electronic payment software, Robin wants to give up, shareholders will not agree.

The helplessness is that Baidu spends a lot of money, whether it is marketing or activities, or executives personally bring goods, the result is a mediocre response and a very low conversion rate.

Robin even thought about letting Baidu Pay enter Huaguo first and polish the product in Huaguo, but they couldn't get a payment license in Huaguo.

"It's a little bit harder because the Madoff Fund has always had a reputation for having a high barrier to entry, and now that they have a partner, it's hard to convince them to accept a second partner," George said.

But I can try as much as I can. ”

Robin nodded, "You go and try it."

We are under a lot of pressure in the field of electronic payment, not to mention NewPay, and even the market share is much higher than ours.

You say, if Madoff doesn't agree to work with us, is it possible for us to buy it? Robin shifted.

George subconsciously felt that it was not good: "It's too expensive, it would have to start at $20 billion to acquire them, not to mention that all electronic payment-related companies are now extremely overvalued, and now the price of acquisition is directly doubled, that is, $40 billion."

We don't have that much cash to acquire right now, unless we issue additional shares, but Baidu's current disadvantage in the mobile Internet has led to our valuation being undervalued in the market.

Issuing more shares now may have to pull the stock price down again, which is not a good thing for the company's financial health.

I think we'd better try to talk to Madoff first and see if we can work directly with Madoff, so that not only will we not lose money, but we will also make a lot of money. ”

(End of chapter)