Bernie Madoff Lives!
The man behind the world’s largest Ponzi scheme died at 82; the system that enabled his grift continues in his image.
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What also must be known about Bernie Madoff, who died on Wednesday at the age of 82, is that prior to the revelation in December 2008 that he had been running the world’s largest Ponzi scheme, he was, for most of his career, one of the most well-respected figures in finance. He was anything but marginal. He served as the chairman of Nasdaq three different years in the 1990s, and served on the boards of many Wall Street organizations. The funds he ran attracted some of the richest people in the world. His niece married the former assistant director of the Security and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations. (In 2007, he bragged about a “very close” relationship with an SEC regulator. “My niece even married one,” he laughed.) He was an insider.