Thursday 15 April 2021 The Guardian •

News 5

 Bernie Madoff
in London in
2003, five years
before his arrest
PHOTOGRAPH: REX/
SHUTTERSTOCK

 Madoff is
surrounded by
the media after
being placed
under house
arrest in 2008

Bernie Madoff, the

Wall Street swindler
behind $18bn scam,
dies in prison at 82
▲ How the New
scheme, where instead of investing York media
Dominic Rushe cash, he paid off older investors with pilloried Madoff
Edward Helmore New York funds from new investors. A court- after details of
appointed trustee recovered more his huge fraud
Bernie Madoff, the Wall Street titan than $13bn of an estimated $17.5bn were revealed
who orchestrated one of the largest that investors had put into Madoff ’s
frauds in history and epitomised an business. The recovered sum fell far
era of garguantuan financial excess, short of the total Madoff had told
has died in prison, aged 82. duped clients he was managing.
Madoff, a former chairman of the At the time of his arrest, fake

13
Nasdaq stock exchange, was regarded account statements were telling cli-
for years as an investment sage. But ents they had holdings worth $60bn.
unbeknown to his thousands of vic- The global financial crisis of 2008
tims, he was running a Ponzi scheme prompted the scheme to unravel, Amount, in
that wiped out at least $17.5bn leaving thousands of victims bereft of billions of
(£12.7bn) in savings. His crimes were their savings and Madoff as an avatar dollars, of
seen as symbol of the “greed is good” for the failure of regulators and finan- investors’
philosophy that saw finance and cial corruption. cash that was
financiers scrutinised and reviled in In December 2008, as investors recovered
the wake of the 2008 financial crash. worried about the crisis started asked
Imposing a 150-year sentence for their money back, Madoff called
in 2009, judge Denny Chin called a family meeting at his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary
Madoff’s crimes “extraordinarily apartment, and confessed to his sons of his father’s arrest for what was then
evil”. His actions devastated the that the family business was based described the biggest swindle in Wall
lives of his victims, leading to sui- on “one big lie”. When FBI agents Street history. His brother Peter who
cides, bankruptcies and home losses. arrived at his door on a December helped run the business, was jailed
Elie Wiesel, the late Holocaust morning he invited them in and was for 10 years in 2012, despite claims he
survivor and Nobel laureate whose asked if there was “an innocent expla- was in the dark about the misdeeds.
foundation lost $15.2m, said in the nation”. Madoff responded: “There Another son, Andrew, died from can-
same year: “We thought he was God; is no innocent explanation.” ▲ A college ring, cer at age 48.
we trusted everything in his hands.” As well as Wiesel, investors one of 200 items Bernie Madoff was born in 1938 in
Wiesel described him as “one of the included actors Kevin Bacon, Kyra seized from him a lower-middle-class Jewish neigh-
greatest scoundrels, thieves, liars, Sedgwick and John Malkovich, and bourhood in the New York borough
criminals”. Hollywood director Steven Spielberg.  Bernie and of Queens. He began his Wall Street
Madoff died at the Federal Medi- Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 to Ruth Madoff at a career in 1960 alongside his brother
cal Center, a prison for inmates with securities fraud and other charges, party in 2008 Peter with a few thousand dollars
health needs, in Butner, North Caro- saying he was “deeply sorry and saved from working as a lifeguard
lina, apparently from natural causes. ashamed”. and installing sprinklers.
Last year his lawyers filed court “He stole from the rich. He stole In the 1980s Bernard L Madoff
papers to try to get him released from from the poor. He stole from the in- Investment Securities occupied
prison during the pandemic, saying between. He had no values,” former three floors of a midtown Manhat-
he had end-stage renal disease and investor Tom Fitzmaurice told the tan high-rise.
other chronic medical conditions. judge at the sentencing. “He cheated There, with his brother and later
The request was denied. his victims out of their money so he two sons, he ran a legitimate business
In 2008 Madoff pleaded guilty and his wife … could live a life of as middlemen between the buyers
to orchestrating a massive Ponzi luxury beyond belief.” and sellers of stock.
The family had a $7m Manhattan Madoff raised his profile by using
apartment, an $11m estate in Palm the expertise to help launch Nasdaq,
Beach, and a $4m home on Long the first electronic stock exchange,
Island, a home in the south of France, and became so respected that he
private jets and a yacht. But later, advised the Securities and Exchange
they took a severe financial hit: a Commission on the system. But what
judge issued a $171bn forfeiture order, the SEC never found out was that in
stripping Madoff of all his personal a separate office under lock and key,
property and $80m in assets his wife, Madoff was secretly spinning a web
Ruth, had claimed were hers. The of phantom wealth.
order left her with $2.5m.
▲ Madoff ’s private jet. He also In 2010, Madoff ’s eldest son, Mark, ▲ Bernie Madoff in prison uniform in 2017. His death, at a unit for inmates Agencies contributed to this report
owned several homes and a yacht was found hanged in his New York with health needs, in North Carolina, was apparently from natural causes Journal Obituary Page 10