Bernie Madoff, the orchestrator of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, died today (April 14) at age 82 in North Carolina, at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, a prison for inmates with severe medical conditions. Madoff had been suffering from chronic kidney failure.
His victims may resist dancing on Madoff’s grave, but there will likely be few tears shed for the once highly regarded Manhattan-based financier and Nasdaq chairman who defrauded his clients to the tune of $65 billion through the classic Ponzi con: using money from new investors in a fictional investment to pay “returns” to former investors in the same fabricated vehicle—in this case, a mysterious, lucrative investment fund. The fallout from his scheme led directly to deaths by suicide and stress, and stole the life savings of thousands of people.
Madoff made other Ponzi schemes look minuscule by comparison
Ponzi schemes are, in fact, not as uncommon as you might imagine if the Madoff story is the last one that caught your attention around the time of his arrest in 2008. Every year, dozens of people in the US alone are charged with the crime. But nothing about the Madoff scandal even remotely resembles the still-devastating, but smaller Ponzi crimes that came before or after Madoff set up office in Manhattan’s famous Lipstick building.
First, there is that $65 billion figure, with investors’ principal losses pegged at $17.3 billion. The next largest Ponzi scheme on record was conducted by…
