He died Wednesday, according to an emailed statement from Brandon Sample, Madoff’s attorney. No cause was given. Madoff’s home since July 2009 was the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, where he was serving a 150-year term. He requested compassionate early release, citing end-stage kidney disease, in February 2020.
Up until his death, Madoff “lived with guilt and remorse for his crimes,” Sample said. “Although the crimes Bernie was convicted of have come to define who he was -he was also a father and a husband. He was soft spoken and an intellectual. Bernie was by no means perfect. But no man is.”
A private invitation to ruin
Bernard Madoff has taken the secrets of his Ponzi scheme to his relatively comfortable new jail accommodation where he will spend the rest of his life. No one knows, and he isn’t telling, how long his fraud lasted, how much it netted and who was in it with him by Ibrahim Warde
The economic crisis has uncovered all sorts of financial scams. After ultra-sophisticated products that promised the earth before dragging down the whole financial sector, we have what seems to be the most primitive kind of fraud: pyramids. To avoid the risk of making bad investments, the promoters of such operations don’t bother with placing the money they take. They simply plunder deposits, using sums deposited by the most recent investors to pay back the earlier ones, and pocket the rest.
Bernard Madoff exits the Manhattan federal court house in New York, U.S. on Jan. 14, 2009. Madoff pleaded guilty in that March to fraud, money laundering, perjury and theft and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Photo by Reuters/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
Article content
Bernard Madoff, the Manhattan investment adviser who promised stellar returns to his A-list clients and instead defrauded them of more than US$19 billion in history’s largest Ponzi scheme, has died. He was 82.
His death, “believed to be from natural causes,” was reported by the Associated Press. Madoff’s home since July 2009 was the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, where he was serving a 150-year term. He requested compassionate early release, citing end-stage kidney disease, in February 2020.
Bernard Madoff, the Manhattan investment adviser who promised stellar returns to his A-list clients and instead defrauded them of more than $19 billion in history’s largest Ponzi scheme, has died. He was 82.
His death was confirmed by the New York law firm of Brandon Sample, Madoff’s attorney. Madoff’s home since July 2009 was the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, where he was serving a 150-year term. He requested compassionate early release, citing end-stage kidney disease, in February 2020.
Like Charles Ponzi, whose 1920 con earned him a place in the annals of crime, Madoff seemed to deliver stunning returns to his clients, when in fact he was paying existing investors with money from new ones.