Creator and operator of an incredibly enormous Ponzi scheme, said to have cost his clients around $65 billion, is Bernard Madoff of New York.
Financier Madoff is a rarity: a white-collar miscreant who actually confessed to what he had done rather than pleading not guilty or weasel-wording that he "might have made errors of judgment."
Instead, he pled guilty to duping an enormous number of investors, some of them very wealthy and presumably sophisticated individuals, via what might very well be the biggest Ponzi scheme anyone ever operated.
Madoff started his own Wall Sreet firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, in 1960 and grew great wealth for himself and some of his employees, some of whom were family members.
Madoff lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous, with a New York penthouse plus other residences in Palm Beach and France.
In 2008, with trouble closing in, he confessed to his sons that he was operating what amounted to a giant Ponzi scheme. The two younger Madoffs turned him in, and their father was arrested by the FBI straightaway.
For a time, Madoff was held in house arrest, but his bail was revoked and he was taken into custody. He was found guilty and sentenced in 2009 to 150 years in prison, with restitution demands of $170 billion.
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