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<\/p>\nI paid very little attention to Bernie Madoff’s death, just as I paid no attention to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. I’m not wealthy and I have never trusted “financial advisors'” advice.<\/p>\n
But, as always, Kevin Underhill (LoweringTheBar) comes up, uh, trumps with his sort of encomium to Madoff. It’s full of information, wonderment and plenty of laughs.<\/p>\n
P.S. My fave sentence is the very last one, about another Ponzier, Scott Rothstein.<\/p>\n
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If a flag near you is at half-staff today, it\u2019s not because of the death of Bernard L. Madoff, who croaked on Wednesday at the age of 82<\/a>. By dying, Madoff managed to avoid serving the remaining 139 years of his sentence, which, as you may recall, he received for running the largest Ponzi scheme<\/a> in history. That scheme cost his victims at least $17 billion, not counting the profits they might have made if they\u2019d actually been investing their money and not just giving it to Bernie Madoff.<\/p>\n The New York Times <\/em>article linked above gives a fairly complete overview of the saga, although it leaves out a few details I think are important. Madoff\u2014who the Times <\/em>says once spent \u201can uninspired year in law school,\u201d something I didn\u2019t know\u2014ran his scheme for decades, paying existing investors not with earnings but with money he was taking in from new investors (the definition of a Ponzi scheme). Pretty much every Ponzi scheme falls apart eventually, because the number of potential victims is less than infinite and so sooner or later, the schemer runs out of income. Madoff\u2019s scheme fell apart as a result of the financial crisis in 2007\u20132008, and $64.8 billion in what were supposed to be assets instantly vanished. Thousands of victims lost their savings, some lost their homes, three people committed suicide (including one of Madoff\u2019s sons), and one died of a heart attack attributed to the stress.<\/p>\n Madoff later expressed remorse for what he had done to his victims. Specifically, he did that twice: once just before he was sentenced, and again in February 2020 when he was seeking early release due to illness. (It didn\u2019t help either time.) But at other times, he seemed somewhat less remorseful. See <\/em>\u201c\u2018F\u2014 My Victims,\u2019 Says Bernie Madoff, Enjoying Prison<\/a>\u201d (June 8, 2010). Yes, \u201cf\u2014 my victims,\u201d Madoff reportedly said shortly after beginning his sentence, when another inmate \u201cbadgered\u201d him on that subject, according to an article in New York<\/em> magazine<\/a>. \u201cI carried them for 20 years, and now I\u2019m doing 150 years.\u201d 150 is more than 20, you see, so that\u2019s completely unfair. \u201cPeople just kept throwing money at me,\u201d Madoff told his prison consultant (he had a prison consultant), and he couldn\u2019t very well not take it, could he?<\/p>\n What he did with that money was the topic of another article here, which I wrote after learning that the U.S. Marshals Service was auctioning off a bunch of his possessions to try to recover at least some of the money for his victims. See <\/em>\u201cBuy Some of Bernie Madoff\u2019s Stupid Crap This Weekend<\/a>\u201d (Nov. 12, 2010). Just to touch on what some of that stupid crap was, Madoff owned a stuffed alligator, dozens of watches, 67 belts, over 200 pairs of shoes\u2014including 88 identical pairs of a brand called \u201cMr. Casual Belgium\u201d\u2014and one presumably non-functional crystal ball.<\/p>\n Still alive for now (in an undisclosed location within the federal prison system) is fellow Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, who stole less money than Madoff (less than $2 billion, in fact), but whose story I think is more amusing. You may recall, for example, his gold-plated toilet<\/a>, his decision to flee to Morocco<\/a>, his decision to come back<\/em> from Morocco<\/a>, and his statement<\/a> that he asked his partners not to deal drugs from their law office for the very good reason that, as he put it later, he was trying to run a \u201cgiant Ponzi scheme\u201d out of that office and didn\u2019t want them screwing it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I paid very little attention to Bernie Madoff’s death, just as I paid no attention to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. I’m not wealthy and I have never trusted “financial advisors’” advice. But, as always, Kevin Underhill (LoweringTheBar) comes up, uh, … Continue reading