Good News! Bernie Madoff Is Dead!

Some people make you happy with their arrival, while others bring joy with their departure. So it is with Bernard L. Madoff.

Scumbag Ponzi schemer, thief, liar, chronically habitual pathological prevaricator, con artist, good-for-nothing felonious criminal Bernard Madoff has died aged 82 this morning in Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, a facility in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to an anonymous source with direct knowledge of the matter and who was not authorized to speak publicly. The BOP acknowledged Madoff’s death later in the day.

The Associated Press and CNBC reported that Madoff died of apparently “natural causes” while serving a 150 year sentence handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin who sentenced Madoff to the maximum penalty in March 2009 after Madoff plead guilty to all charges against him. In July 2019, financial news network CNBC reported that Madoff had filed application the Department of Justice for commutation of his sentence from then-President Trump, which was summarily denied.

Bernard L. Madoff, USDOJ booking picture 2008

When U.S. District Court Judge Danny Chin sentenced Madoff, he said in part that, “Here, the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of irresponsible manipulation of the system is not merely a bloodless financial crime that takes place just on paper, but it is instead … one that takes a staggering human toll.”

At his sentencing, Madoff appeared to attempt to minimize the catastrophic damage he’d inflicted which he had caused, and said that his actions were a “problem,” “an error of judgment” and “a tragic mistake.”

Following his arrest, Bernie Madoff was initially jailed briefly at the infamous Metropolitan Correction Center in Lower Manhattan after pleading guilty to 11 Federal felony criminal charges that carried a combined maximum prison sentence of 150 years, and was sentenced June 16, 2009 for masterminding the largest investment fraud in United States history. At the end of November 2008, his fraudulent firm, Bernard L. Madoff Securities, reported to his victim-clients that their so-called investments with him were valued at a total of $65 billion. However, he held but a very nominal fraction of that amount.

For several decades, Madoff was a considered a Wall $treet golden-haired guru, and even enjoyed a chairmanship of the NASDAQ stock market which he helped establish.

As a self-styled “investment advisor,” Madoff cast himself as a self-made man with a veritable sixth-sense for financial markets that defied their inevitable fluctuations.

The types of people whom he defrauded and bankrupted were as broad-reaching as his scam, and ranged from Florida retirees to celebrities including renown film director Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, and included the ruination of various charities and foundations.

Among Madoff’s client-victims were Jewish charities, and Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who recollected meeting him years earlier at a dinner event in which he and Madoff discussed history, education and Jewish philosophy – everything but money.

During a panel discussion in 2009 about Madoff’s criminal enterprise, Elie Wiesel said that Bernie Madoff “made a very good impression,” and admitted that he also had fallen prey to, and believed “a myth that he created around him that everything was so special, so unique, that it had to be secret.”

Tom Fitzmaurice, another victim of Madoff’s massive theft, at Bernie’s sentencing told Judge Chin that, “He stole from the rich. He stole from the poor. He stole from the in between. He had no values. He cheated his victims out of their money so he and his wife … could live a life of luxury beyond belief.”

Bernie’s massive fraud and theft enabled him, and his wife, to enjoy lavish lifestyles, which included numerous opulent homes – a luxury penthouse apartment in Manhattan, a sumptuous $4 million house on the tip of Long Island, a palatial $11 million estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and an exotic residence on the French Rivera along the Mediterranean coast – including a yacht moored there, along with several private jets.

A news item from 2009 shortly after the time of his arrest, and guilty plea stated that,

“The targeted assets, many of which are held by Madoff’s wife, Ruth, include: A Manhattan condominium on East 64th Street where Madoff was under house arrest for three months prior to his guilty plea, valued at $7 million; homes in Montauk, New York, Palm Beach, Florida and Cap d’Antibes, France, as well as “all insured and readily salable personal property” contained in the homes; a yacht named Bull, docked in France; three other boats; four automobiles, including two Mercedes, one BMW and one Volkswagen; a Steinway piano valued at $39,000; a silverware set valued at $65,000; $17 million deposited at Wachovia Bank; $45 million in securities held at COHMAD Securities; and Madoff’s interest in COHMAD Securities.”

Bernie’s downfall was curious – in the winter of 2008 he confessed to his sons that his so-called business was “all just one big lie.” He also confessed to CFO Frank DiPascali who turned state’s witness and testified against Madoff that Bernie had one day called him into his office after “He’d been staring out the window the all day. He turned to me and he said, crying, ‘I’m at the end of my rope. … Don’t you get it? The whole goddamn thing is a fraud.’”

Following Bernie’s bizarrely startling revelation, a family attorney contacted Federal regulators which in turn, contacted other authorities, including the FBI and Federal prosecutors.

Following his confession to his family and to CFO DiPascali, in December 2008, 2 FBI agents showed up at Bernie’s residence one morning unannounced. Bernie, who was dressed in a bathrobe, greeted them, and invited them in. The criminal complaint later made against him stated that, when they asked him “if there’s an innocent explanation,” he confessed saying “There is no innocent explanation.”

When he later said that he acted alone in his criminal enterprise, the FBI never believed him. Altogether, about 12 former employees of Madoff and Associates were Federally charged, and 5 went on trial in 2013.

When Madoff was arrested, falsified account statements of the Ponzi scheme made by him deliberately misled his victim-clients into believing that the value of their “investment holdings” with him were in excess of $60 billion. It is unquestionably the largest financial fraud in the history of Wall $treet. He was so widely hated by so many that at his trial, that he wore a bulletproof vest to court.

As part of his sentence against Madoff, Judge Chin ordered forfeiture stripping him of all his personal property, including all investments, real estate, and other assets which totaled $80 million. Madoff’s wife Ruth claimed that the items subject to confiscation were hers, but Judge Chin didn’t believe her story, and she was left with $2.5 million.

She also cast herself as a victim of Bernie’s fraud, claiming that Bernie had deceived her ever since high school where they were sweethearts, and said that “I am embarrassed and ashamed. Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years.” And later, in May 2019, Ruth agreed to pay agreed to pay $594,000 and to surrender her remaining assets upon her death as part of a settlement.

In the years since Madoff’s arrest, conviction, and incarceration, a Federal court-appointed trustee has recovered over $13 billion of an estimated $17.5 billion that deceived investors had put into Madoff’s hands. Sometimes, that has involved suing hedge funds, and other substantially large investors who enjoyed significant gains. Altogether, over 15,400 claims were filed against Bernie Madoff.

But Bernie Madoff’s massive theft also had other effects upon him, aside from the judge’s order. One of his two sons, Mark, committed suicide in 2010 on the 2nd anniversary of Bernie’s arrest, while Andrew died aged 48 of cancer, and Bernie’s brother Peter, who had for years helped run the fraudulent “business” was sentenced to 10 years in prison despite his claims that he knew nothing about Bernie’s fraud. Ruth is now aged 79, and has lived in virtual exile since.

Bernie wasn’t always a dishonest scheming con man.

Born in 1938 in a lower-middle-class Jewish neighborhood in the borough of Queens, Bernie worked with his brother Peter selling and installing fire sprinklers, in addition to being lifeguards at a swimming pool. With the few thousand dollars they’d saved, they left for Wall $treet to make their fortunes. And in the process, became legendary.

In a 2008 interview, Thomas Morling, who for many years worked closely with Bernie and Peter Madoff in the mid-1980s creating computer networks which ran their theft scheme, and made them trusted leaders in off-floor trading, said that, “They were two struggling kids from Queens. They worked hard. When Peter or Bernie said something that they were going to do, their word was their bond.”

In the go-go-go greed-induced financial atmosphere of the 1980’s, Bernie’s fraudulent business had a significant air of respectability, and his fraudulent firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, occupied 3 entire floors of a midtown Manhattan high-rise where he and Peter alleged to operate a legitimate business as “middlemen” between the buyers and sellers of stock.

Madoff’s respectability was significantly increased when he used his expertise to help launch NASDAQ, the first electronic stock exchange, and in that process became so respected that he advised the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the system. Despite his involvement with the SEC, the Federal regulatory agency never discovered Bernie’s massive fraud – a behind-the-scenes separate, secured office that spun out a massively deceitful and fraudulent web which invented wealth from thin air by churning fresh money from new victims to pay old victims – a Ponzi scheme.

Behind those closed and locked doors, an old IBM computer was used to crank out monthly statements which falsely showed his victims a steady stream of double-digit returns… even during market downturns. And as of late 2008 when Madoff was arrested, those statements claimed investor accounts totaled $65 billion, but the reality was much more bleak, and corrosive, because they were totally fabricated, and utterly fraudulent. Frank DiPascali, who was Chief Financial Officer of the Madoff criminal enterprise, said at Bernie’s 2009 guilty plea that the entire operation and the claims of trades were “all fake.” Not even one share of stock was ever traded, or sold during Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme.

Jerry Reisman, an attorney who represented about three dozen of Madoff’s victims, said that he’d spoken to several of them after Madoff’s death and that no one was saddened by the news of his death. “Some of them are saying they’re enjoying this day. No one sees this as a great loss. No one is going to mourn Bernie Madoff. They are happy they have survived him.”

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