Madoff Schadenfreude

The current June issue of Vanity Fair has an interesting article on Bernie Madoff and his 18-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.

In the article Madoff’s former personal secretary, Eleanor Squillari, provides a glimpse of the personal dynamics of Bernie Madoff, his immediate family, and the commotion that transpired upon his arrest. The Madoff news story has a little bit of everything- an engaging mountebank, the surprising banality of evil, avarice, Manhattan gossip, and an uber-large dose of schadenfreude.

The Vanity Fair website also has related articles, describing how Madoff used the “con of exclusivity,” to take peoples’ money into his fraudulent swindle. In a January web article, writer Marie Brenner describes-

"Madoff masked the predator in the cloak of the familiar. His clothes said London—Barbour jackets, cashmere sweaters...

Madoff had used the Studio 54 approach, the con of exclusivity. He understood the swamp of insecurities that lay underneath many of his clients’ designer clothes, their face-lifts, their need to be part of an insiders’ club. A former governor of the New York Stock Exchange had once gone to see Madoff on behalf of a client who wanted to invest. “I don’t need your money,” Madoff told him, “and I don’t discuss my investments.” Then he ushered him out the door...

We rode a decade in which people conferred special status on those who lived in $30 million apartments, leased NetJets, and filled their closets with $5,000 purses. Did Bernard Madoff see his opportunities and seize them, or did the casino atmosphere in New York spawn the ordinary man in the Barbour coat who would become the greatest con artist of all time? Madoff provided his victims with a mirage of an impossible dream house—with investments that paid 12 percent in good times and bad—and their tragedy and ours was that they believed him..."
And while restitution for the Ponzi scheme victims seems unlikely, federal law enforcement has begun the seizure of Madoff "personal" assets as well. (I'm assuming they have already seized all assets within the Madoff financial firm.)

As of this writing, I have not read of any charges being brought against his wife, Ruth Madoff, but some reports exist that she made significant cash withdrawals just prior to her husband's arrest. The New York Post reported that Ruth Madoff was “fighting to hold on to her $7 million Manhattan apartment, $45 million in cash and $17 million in bonds…
(meanwhile) U.S. Marshals have seized Bernie's $1.5 million, 55-foot yacht, ‘Bull’ from its slip in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
They also seized a 24-foot-long boat named "Little Bull," that was also moored in Fort Lauderdale.
They've also seized a 55-foot, $7 million yacht in the South of France.”

A little more schadenfreude, anyone?



Read
Madoff Schadenfreude Part 2

Post Entry- For a list of wristwatches seized and auctioned from Madoff read Interwatches Blog.