Ponzi Scheme | Bernie Madoff | Financial Literacy | Investing | Business Ethics

After getting your students all excited about stocks and investing, it is a good idea to warn them about Ponzi schemers and fraudulent financial advisers. This ethics lesson teaches your class about Ponzi schemes and particularly the Bernie Madoff story where one man convinced unsuspecting investors to hand over their savings and accounts. The unethical Madoff stole approx. $65 Billion from a variety of investors.

I make a point of covering this lesson in my Investing Unit for Financial Literacy, but it is relevant to an Ethics Unit in a Business class as well. Madoff stole $64.8 Billion of other people’s, organizations, and even charitable institutions savings.

This lesson is a warning that there are bad people out there that will take your hard-earned savings in Ponzi Schemes.

Madoff’s firm was small, exclusive, and incredibly opaque. Few people had suspected that the money was NOT being truly invested on the investor’s behalf until it was too late.

A portion of the lesson is video, and it really draws the student into understanding the tremendous damage that Madoff had done. There is a student activity that helps your class record information and answer questions to cement the learning. A warmup prepares students for inferences into the psyche of a dishonest person.

In my experience, students are amazed by the sinister and unethical actions of Bernie Madoff and walk out of the class a bit wiser and ready to ask questions before trusting anyone with managing their savings.

Included in the Zip Folder for this resource:

• Lesson Guide with links to videos, guided questions for whole class discussion, and pacing of activities.
• Learning Goals and Targets
• Do Now Activity
• Short Slide Presentation to help teacher seamlessly deliver lesson – notes below slides (PPT and Google Slide versions)
• Teacher Slide Notes PDF so you can print it out for your reference.
• Student Graphic Organizer Doc to guide the learning and increase engagement.
• Answer Key to Student Questions to help you the teacher
• Closure Activity

Prepare your students for success NOW and after high school.

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