Bernard Madoff, a former financier, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 82. He was famously known for orchestrating the largest investment fraud in U.S. history, defrauding thousands of clients of billions of dollars. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison for his crimes. Madoff’s death occurred at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, and was confirmed by the federal Bureau of Prisons. Further details about the cause of his death can be found in the rest of this article.
Who Was Bernie Madoff?
Bernard Madoff, also known as Bernie Madoff, was born on April 29, 1938, in Brooklyn, New York to Ralph and Sylvia Madoff. His father worked as a plumber before entering the financial industry with his wife, who later founded Gibraltar Securities, which was forced to close by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Madoff earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Hofstra University in 1960 and briefly attended law school at Brooklyn Law School. While in college, he married his high-school sweetheart, Ruth (née Alpern), with whom he later founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960.
Madoff began his career trading penny stocks with $5,000 he earned from installing sprinklers and working as a lifeguard. He eventually persuaded family, friends, and others to invest with him. However, during the “Kennedy Slide” flash crash in 1962, Madoff’s bets soured, and his father-in-law had to bail him out.
How Did Bernie Madoff Die?
Bernard Madoff, who was serving a 150-year prison sentence, passed away reportedly from natural causes at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, according to apnews. This information was confirmed by an anonymous source familiar with the matter. Madoff would have turned 83 on April 29th. Prior to his death, he was receiving treatment for terminal kidney disease at the prison. In June, Madoff requested compassionate release from prison. However, it was denied.
Why was Bernie Madoff Arrested?
The extent of Bernard Madoff’s fraud not only shocked but also angered the American public, particularly during a time of significant economic turmoil, the largest since the Great Depression. The involvement of high-profile investors, such as Steven Spielberg, Kevin Bacon, and John Malkovich, in Madoff’s hedge fund, brought further attention to the case.
Madoff claimed that he initiated the scheme in the 1990s, stating that this was the last time he actively traded, and all returns he reported since then were fabricated. However, prosecutors argue that the fraud began earlier, possibly as early as the 1970s. Regardless, Madoff’s Ponzi scheme went largely undetected until the financial crisis of the late 2000s. Several members of Madoff’s family were involved in his hedge fund, but they claimed to have had no knowledge that it was a fraudulent scheme.
On December 10, 2008, Bernard Madoff’s two sons, Mark and Andrew Madoff confronted their father over his plan to give bonuses to employees ahead of schedule that December. It was during this confrontation that Madoff admitted that his business was based on a lie and was collapsing as markets plummeted.
The brothers subsequently went to the police, and Madoff was arrested the following day. Mark Madoff tragically took his own life by hanging himself in his Manhattan apartment on December 11, 2010, two years to the day after his father’s arrest. Andrew Madoff died of lymphoma in 2014 and attributed the return of his cancer to the stress caused by his father’s crimes.
Bernie Madoff’s Netflix Documentary Series
MADOFF: The Monster of Wall Street, which came out on January 4, 2023, is now on Netflix. The series looks at Madoff’s infamous crimes and how they couldn’t have been stopped because of many systemic mistakes.
According to Netflix, “Madoff, an American financier, just took people’s money and told them he was going to invest it, but he never did.”
