collapsed. >> desperate investors and their lawyers scrambled to madoff's east side offices friday looking for their money. they were turned away in the lobby. >> there has never been a ponzi scheme on the scale of madoff ever. we're talking thousands of people who thought that they had millions of dollars socked away for retirement, suddenly found out it was gone. >> rose and jack lass say they invested every penny of their savings with madoff. >> we started to sell our furniture, some of our things that we value, so that we should have some money immediately. >> then there's 91-year-old ian thiermann. he had to take a job at a grocery store after losing $700,000 to madoff. >> the human suffering that madoff caused, i don't think we can ever fully grasp. homes had to be sold, college educations truncated. people had to come out of retirement, go to work at whatever job they could get. and for those people, the madoff fraud is never going to be over. >> what may very well be the final steps of freedom for perhaps the most despised man in america, bernie madoff entered a federal court in manhattan today