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Bernie Madoff, “mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history”, died last week, said Ben Hoyle in The Times. Madoff, 82, was serving a 150-year sentence for swindling thousands of well-heeled clients out of some $65bn in investments – having beguiled them with fictitious annual returns of 10% or more. A former chairman of the Nasdaq, he exuded authority. Among those ensnared were actors John Malkovich and Zsa Zsa Gabor, director Steven Spielberg and the Nobel Prize-winning Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, whose foundation lost $15m. “We thought he was God. We trusted everything in his hands,” Wiesel remarked. But Madoff fooled even the pros. Fund manager Nicola Horlick – the so-called City “superwoman” – invested £20m with Madoff, telling the FT just before his exposure in 2008: “he is very, very good at calling the US equity market”.