Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot facts for kids

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot is a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) attorney. She worked on the Bernard Madoff investigation in 2004, as the Lead Investigator for the SEC on the case. She discovered key elements of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and reported them to her superiors. She was moved off the case prior to being able to complete the investigation.

Education

Genevievette E. Walker graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Huntington, New York, received her B.A. from Georgetown University, and attended the Catholic University of America (J.D., 1999).

American Stock Exchange

Walker-Lightfoot worked at the American Stock Exchange from 1999–2001 as a staff lawyer.

SEC leadership changes

Leaders of the SEC testified on February 4, 2009, before the United States House Committee on Financial Services subcommittee including Linda Chatman Thomsen (SEC enforcement director), acting General Counsel Andy Vollmer, Andrew Donohue, Erik Sirri, and Lori Richards (SEC Director of compliance inspections and examinations; Walker-Lightfoot's Senior Department Head)), and Stephen Luparello of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

The subject of the hearings was why the SEC had failed to act when Harry Markopolos, a private fraud investigator, alerted the SEC detailing his persistent and unsuccessful efforts to get the SEC to investigate Madoff, beginning in 1999.

Richards ultimately testified that her department failed to find Madoff due to having to "match available staff resources to the most pressing needs". She restated the same cause for missing the Madoff Ponzi scheme June 17, 2009, in a speech at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association's Compliance and Legal Division St. Louis Regional Seminar.

On July 9, six days after the Washington Post article concerning Walker-Lightfoot's involvement in the Madoff investigation was published), The Post announced that Richards would resign from the SEC in order to "take on new challenges."