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Lad from Lagos bids $100 trillion for Madoff empire

But may need to borrow some cash for a lawyer

Fans of the Lads from Lagos will be delighted to learn that one Ade O. Ogunjobi has made an audacious bid for the remains of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC - pitching no less than $100 trillion in stock or 400,000,000 shares in order to establish the world's biggest bank "to fight global poverty and now to address the current financial crisis".

Ogunjobi's first move came in the form of a "Motion for Intervention" in the case of Securities Investor Protection Corporation v. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. The founder of "Toks, Inc. and it wholly-owned subsidiaries" declared himself prepared to stump $60,000,000,000 in stock and 240,000,000 from his global empire to secure his prize.

He later upped this offer to $100 trillion and 400 million shares in a letter to Madoff trustee Irving Picard, who's less than impressed with the scheme. Picard asked Manhattan Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland to kick Ogunjobi's offer into touch and "dispense with a hearing... which would unnecessarily cause the expenditure of additional time and resources on this matter".

Ogunjobi insisted his offer was real and that he'd be in court on 2 June for the scheduled hearing. However, his case may be handicapped by an apparent lack of ready cash. He's already had a bit of trouble finding $5,000 to retain an attorney, and his last brief backed out "after Mr Ogunjobi asked him to witness a loan application for the same amount, repayable at $125 a month over four years".

Whether he finds the cash for a lawyer or not, Ogunjobi is preparing to enter the record books with his whopping offer, insisting the situation "now even calls for initial contact to Guinness World Records (formerly known as The Guinness Book of Records) to monitor this gigantic offering".

Among Ogunjobi's previous attempts at global financial fame was this bold grab for Yahoo!.

The entrepreneur appears to have suggested that Yahoo! lend him the cash to buy itself, after which he'd offload it to Microsoft - on the condition that MS "put down $2,000,000,000 in cash as the 'down payment' to buy Yahoo!".

Ogunjobi notes: "The $2,000,000,000 in cash must be wired to us and we will provide information at anytime." ®

Bootnote

Thanks to Adam Titmus for the tip-off.

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