Greed Through the Years

This past Monday Bernie Madoff was sentenced for his $50 billion ponzi scheme but he wasn't the first greedy figure to enter the pages of history.

Victims felt some vindication when Madoff received the maximum sentence of 150 years behind bars. Judge Denny Chin said despite Madoff's guilty plea it's important for the sentence to serve as a deterrent to future offenders. And so with the swing of the gaval, Madoff joined the nefarious group of the greediest people in history.

The list put together by Newsweek, unites Romans, Chinese and a former head of the Catholic church as some of the worst offenders. While Madoff holds the title for stealing the most money he was far from alone in the deceit department. For example number eight on the list is Imedla Marcos who earned her status of greed for $5 million shopping sprees and 3,000 pairs of shoes while the people her husband presided over in the Philipines starved. To see who else made the cut keep reading. Despite the famous saying from actor Michael Douglas in the movie "Wall Street" that greed is good, it is not. Something Madoff will ponder every day, behind bars.

From Newsweek

1. Marcus Licinius Crassus, 115 BC-53 BC
Crassus didn’t need foreclosure proceedings to claim his real estate. This Roman general and supporter of Julius Caesar routinely increased his property holdings during “fire sales.” During the city’s occasional fires, he would arrive with his soldiers at a home that interested him and offer to buy the burning property for a song. Once the transaction was done, he’d put his minions to work dousing the flames.

2. Genghis Khan, 1162-1227
He wanted to own the whole world, and came closer to accomplishing that than anybody else, before or since. After his death, his kingdom stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Adriatic Sea.

3. Pope Sixtus IV, 1471
This Pope greatly enriched himself and his top cardinals (who may have been his sons) by licensing and taxing brothels and claiming he could retroactively get the troubled souls of dead people into heaven by selling indulgences to their living relatives. Oh, and he sanctioned the Spanish Inquisition too.

4. William H. Vanderbilt, 1821-1884
He inherited vast wealth, built it into a whole lot more and lacked any sense of noblesse oblige. Arguably the most wealthy and powerful man of his time, he controlled the world’s largest railroad network and became notorious for saying: “The public be damned! I don’t take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody but our own.”

5. William M. “Boss” Tweed, 1823-1878
One of the original fat cats, Tweed weighed in at almost 300 pounds. Tweed used his Tammany Hall political machine to separate New York taxpayers from as much as $200 million (roughly $8 billion in 2009 dollars). His avarice was regularly lampooned in political cartoons.

6. Empress Dowager Cixi, 1835-1908
She started as a concubine but became the de facto ruler of China for nearly 50 years. She all but ran her son’s empire until his death. Then she had her 3-year-old nephew named emperor and kept him locked up so she could continue to run the show-for a profit. Cixi used the navy’s money to build herself a marble banquet boat, aboard which she ate 150-dish dinners with golden chopsticks. She had 3,000 jewelry boxes; who knows how many jewels?

7. Charles Ponzi, 1882-1949
He had an entire scheme named after him. Enough said.

8. Imelda Marcos, 1929-
She saw it as her duty to provide “some kind of light, a star” for the impoverished Filipino people over whom her husband presided. So she took $5 million shopping sprees to New York and Rome, reportedly owned the world’s largest collection of gems and 3,000 pairs of shoes.

9. Ivan Boesky, 1937-
Boesky made more than $200 million as an arbitrageur and inspired Oliver Stone to create Gordon Gekko, the Greed-is-Good character from “Wall Street.” But it turns out he wasn’t brilliant, just using inside info to shoot fish in a barrel.

10. Dennis Kozlowski, 1946-
As CEO of Tyco International, he defrauded shareholders of more than $400 million. He once spent $6,000 in company funds on a gold shower curtain, and had the company pay half the $2 million price tag on his wife’s birthday party, which featured toga-clad hostesses.

11. Bernard Madoff, 1938-
He ran what might be the biggest fraud ever, totaling as much as $50 billion. Among his victims were several charities and people he claimed as friends. He and his wife have the yachts, cars, an exclusive Upper East Side apartment and other real estate holdings to prove it.