This is not just a book about the past, it is about the future! Bernard Madoff is in jail. You might think the Securities Industry is once again safe for investors. You would be wrong. It started with a phone call on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 8:07 P.M. I was totally unprepared for the 14 words which transpired over the next 10 seconds - "have you heard the financial news - Bernie Madoff was just arrested for securities fraud." These words changed my life forever and began a journey that continues to this day with no end in sight. Many books have been written about Madoff and the largest financial crime in history. This one-of-a-kind book is different. It offers an extraordinary first party view of the scandal from the perspective of an average American who had the misfortune to invest with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities as the central element of a long range retirement plan. This unique narrative discusses my information gathering process, observations and conclusions not only of the inner workings of the Madoff crime, but also of the role played by government regulators and Wall Street in their collective failures to detect the crime and the resulting impact of those failures on investors. Americans have a right to know what really happened. The information I collected is being presented in an adult education class at a local college. That effort led directly to this book with the hope that the message will be received by a much wider audience. If you have a brokerage account, 401k or pension plan that invests money in the U.S. Securities market then this book has a message for you. Wall Street is not a safe place for your money. But not for the reason you might think. Not because stocks carry inherent risk and can lose value due to market dynamics. You are at risk because your broker may be a fraud and regulators can decide your account statement is absolutely worthless. You may think that fraud in a market regulated by the U.S. Government cannot occur. On October 20, 2007, Bernie Madoff told us that "in today's regulatory environment, it is virtually impossible to violate rules. It is impossible for a violation to go undetected." Madoff lied. He did commit fraud. It was never detected. Thousands of American investors are paying a huge price for that fraud. After reading this book you will question whether you should trust your financial future to a system created by Wall Street and regulated by the U.S. Government. You will come to understand how laws that were put in place by Congress with the express intent to protect investors have instead been twisted and misinterpreted to deny those protections - all to the benefit of Wall Street. The system is broken. You are at risk. The brokerage account protections put in place by the U.S. Congress in 1970 share something in common with Madoff - these protections are a fraud. If you are involved in a brokerage fraud you will see that YOU are treated like a criminal and YOUR retirement will be sacrificed to the unrelenting and unforgiving profit motivations of Wall Street. This book isn't really about me, it is about you.