Bernie Madoff

He pleaded guilty to running the largest Ponzi scheme in history, so if you're keen to watch Netflix's new true crime series The Monster of Wallstreet, ...

“At the end of the day, he’s a financial serial killer and the reason I say that is serial killers don’t have empathy,” he said in an interview with “One of the reasons the Ponzi continued and got ramped up on steroids is his legitimate business was starting to fail and so he used that Ponzi money to shore up his legitimate business because he wanted to be Mr Wall Street. During his sentencing hearing, Madoff apologized to his victims, saying: “I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren. According to Berlinger, the reason Madoff pleaded guilty to stealing $19 billion from more than 40,000 investors was not that he was remorseful but because he had also been managing a “significant chunk” of cash for organized crime and he was desperate to protect himself. “There’s no way you can look a widow in the eye at the Palm Beach Country Club and assure them that their life savings will be fine, give me your funds, I’ll take care of you, and then do that to people. Mark Madoff sadly took his own life in 2010 on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest. “The belief was that I couldn’t be doing this all by myself, that there had to be other people involved.” Ego and a sense of belonging to the big club of rich fellas that run the world. According to documents filed by the FBI at the time of Madoff’s arrest, Madoff had actually told his sons that all the family’s wealth and success were based on a lie—a huge Ponzi scheme that was crumbling under the pressure of the 2008 financial crisis. [TMZ](https://www.tmz.com/2021/04/30/bernie-madoff-cremated-north-carolina-death-certificate-ponzi-scheme/) at the time, his cause of death was revealed to be hypertension, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease. He was the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange as well the chairman of his own company, Bernard L. Simultaneously, he and his wife Ruth and their children lived the high life, owning luxury apartments in Manhattan, an $11m estate in Palm Beach, a $4m home at the tip of Long Island, a property in the south of France as well as enjoying private jets and yachts.