Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff dies in prison aged 82

Bernie Madoff is dead but the tragic legacy the fraudster left behind has not been forgotten.

Bernie Madoff, whose $65 billion ($A84bn) Ponzi scheme made him one of the world’s most hated criminals and destroyed even his own family, died on Wednesday at the secure federal medical centre in Butner, North Carolina, where he was serving a 150-year sentence, according to prison officials.

The 82-year-old financier, who had been suffering from end-stage kidney disease and other chronic ailments, died of natural causes.

Madoff would have turned 83 on April 29.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed Madoff’s death but refused to reveal the cause citing “safety, security and privacy reasons.”

Madoff’s massive stock fraud, which came to light amid the global financial crisis of the late 2000s and remains the biggest scam in Wall Street history, left a trail of more than 37,000 victims in 136 countries in its wake.

Investors who fell prey to the biggest white collar crime in modern history ranged from retirees who entrusted Madoff with their lives’ savings to celebrities such as Hollywood power couple Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.

Kevin Bacon (L) and Kyra Sedgwick (R) fell prey to scammer investment guru Bernie Madoff. Picture: Noel Vasquez/Getty Images/AFP

Public outrage against Bernie Madoff led to angry protests outside the Manhattan federal courthouse where he was prosecuted and the Upper East Side apartment building where he lived in a duplex penthouse.

Universities and non-profit organisations also took devastating hits because they had been reliant on his financial endowments which evaporated overnight.

New York University, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and the International Olympic Committee were also ripped off, as were several municipal and union pension funds.

Even the owners of the New York Mets baseball team were among the investors who had cashed out phony profits only to have to pay back ill-gotten gains — forcing them to sell a minority stake in the team and to slash its payroll, with disastrous results.

Mark Madoff left a bitter suicide note to his father, Bernie. Picture: Supplied

Madoff’s massive ripoff was tied to at least four suicides, including that of his elder son, Mark, 48, who hanged himself on the second anniversary of his dad’s 2008 arrest.

Mark Madoff left behind a bitter suicide note: “Bernie, now you know how you have destroyed the lives of your sons by your life of deceit. F – k you”.

Younger son Andrew also blamed Madoff for the recurrence of the rare cancer, mantle-cell lymphoma, that killed him in 2014, also aged 48.

“Even on my deathbed, I will never forgive him for what he did”, Andrew said.

Ruth Madoff is escorted by private security as she leaves the Metropolitan Correctional Center after visiting her husband disgraced financier Bernard Madoff in New York. Picture: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

Madoff’s wife, Ruth, never divorced him but told 60 Minutes in 2011 that she hadn’t spoken to her husband since her son Mark’s suicide.

In 2017, The Post tracked Ruth Madoff down where she was living in virtual exile in a small rental apartment.

The dramatic arc of the scandal and its fallout led to countless news reports, dozens of books and an ABC miniseries starring Richard Dreyfuss and an Emmy-nominated HBO movie with Robert De Niro in the title role.

Robert DeNiro in The Wizard of Lies, an adaptation of the Bernie Madoff story. Picture: Supplied

Bernie Madoff was born in Queens, New York, into humble circumstances.

He founded his eponymous financial firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, in 1960 and began as a “market maker” who accepted buy and sell orders from brokerage houses.

Instead of charging a commission, Madoff pocketed the 12½-cent spread between the bidding and asking prices, and raked in massive profits by paying brokerages a few cents per trade to provide him with a huge volume of orders.

His success led him to be named chairman of the NASDAQ three times and he also launched a hedge fund that he used to carry out his Ponzi scheme.

Madoff claimed to employ a “split strike conversion” investment strategy that consistently generated profits of 12 to 15 per cent a year regardless of market conditions.

Alarm bells were sounded over financier Bernie Madoff as early as 1992 but nothing was done. Picture: Supplied

The Securities and Exchange Commission was repeatedly warned about Madoff as early as 1992 — including in a 21-page 2005 analysis by independent account expert Harry Markopolos titled “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud” — but Madoff successfully duped investigators during five inquiries.

During a 10-minute recitation of his crimes, Bernie Madoff said he began his scam in the early 1990s and admitted that “I knew what I was doing was wrong, indeed criminal.”

The entire scheme came crashing down on 11 December, 2008, when he was busted by the FBI for securities fraud.

The arrest came as a result of a tip by his sons, who both worked for his market-making business, to whom he had confessed the night before — ahead of his company’s Christmas party — that his hedge fund was “all just one big lie” and “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme” that was on the brink of being tapped out.

When the FBI came for him, Bernard Madoff said he had “no innocent explanation” for what he had done. Picture: AFP

When FBI agents showed up at his New York penthouse, one told him they were there “to find out if there’s an innocent explanation.”

“There is no innocent explanation,” Madoff confessed before being hauled off in handcuffs.

He was released on bond and pleaded guilty as charged in March 2009 to 11 counts of fraud, money laundering, false statements, perjury, making a false filing to the SEC and theft from an employee benefit plan.

“When I began the Ponzi scheme, I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients,” he claimed.

“As the years went by, I realised this day, and my arrest, would inevitably come.”

Judge Denny Chin immediately revoked Madoff’s bond and later sentenced him to the maximum punishment for his “extraordinarily evil” crimes during a proceeding at which nine victims spoke, with some breaking down in tears as they described how he’d ruined their lives.

10.54 carat diamond ring, which belonged to Madoff. Picture: AFP Photo

Slippers belonging to Madoff, embroidered with his initials in gold. Picture: AFP

One investor burned by Madoff leapt to death from a luxury hotel balcony.

“I used to think that it didn’t matter if he got 150 years — what would that do for the victims?” Sharon Lissauer said.

“But now … I think he should spend his whole life in jail because what he has done is just despicable.”

For his part, Madoff delivered a monotone apology during which he said, “I live in a tormented state now, knowing of all the pain and suffering that I have created.”

During the final months of his life, Madoff tried desperately to get out of prison, filing a request for clemency from former US President Donald Trump that went unanswered, and seeking compassionate release from the Bureau of Prisons, which turned him down.

Madoff filed another request with the judge who sentenced him, but his bid was opposed by prosecutors who said that his dying in prison would be “wholly justified”.

Madoff is survived by his wife, Ruth; six grandchildren; sister Sondra Wiener and brother Peter Madoff.

— With the New York Post.