Madoff : the final word

Madoff The final word

Richard Behar

Book - 2024

"Some $68 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff's epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme's exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Richard Behar's relationship with Madoff began in 2011 with a simple email request from the inmate. By the time Madoff died in 2021, he had sent Behar more than 300 emails and dozens of handwritten letters, participated in some fifty phone conversations, and sat for three in-person jailhouse interviews--a level of access provided to no other reporter. Behar also established relationships with hundreds of regulators, prosecutors, FBI agents,... investors, Wall Street experts, ex-employees of Madoff's, family members, school classmates, and others. The result is the final word on the criminal behind history's most enduring fraud--and on those who believed him, covered for him, or locked him up. Behar illuminates not only the fraud's origins--decades earlier than Madoff claimed in his confession--but also the complicity of investors, Wall Street insiders, family members, and some of the largest banks in the US and Europe. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar's dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren't many innocents left standing by the end of this tale. Just about everyone involved is guilty, at a minimum, of humanity's most consistent weakness: greed."--Amazon.

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Subjects
Madoff, Bernard L.
Investment advisors > Corrupt practices > United States.
Ponzi schemes > United States.
Swindlers and swindling > United States.
Hedge funds > United States.
Securities fraud > United States.
True crime stories.
Biographies.
Genres
True crime stories
Biographies
Published
New York : Avid Reader Press 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Richard Behar (author)
Edition
First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition
Physical Description
xxv, 357 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of 46 plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781476726892
  • Introduction
  • 1. Bernie in Butner
  • 2. Solved: When the Fraud Began
  • 3. Solved: The Four Horsemen and the Hold-Harmless Hooey
  • 4. The Implosion
  • 5. Hoarding and Shredding
  • 6. The Final Word ... on the Losers
  • 7. The Favored Clients: Shtupped!
  • 8. Giant Shops of Horrors: The Feeders
  • 9. The Ponzi's Engine: JPMorgan Chase
  • 10. The Foreign Banks: Bottom Feeders
  • 11. The Madoff Five (Act 1)
  • 12. The Madoff Five (Act 2)
  • A Prosecutorial Post-Mortem
  • 13. Solved: Who Knew What in the Madoff Family
  • A Prosecutorial Post-Mortem, Part II
  • 14. The Final Word … on the SEC
  • 15. Solved: Bernie's Old New Math
  • 16. The Forever-Unsolvable: Bernie's Brain
  • Acknowledgments
  • Photo Credits
Review by Booklist Review

Award-winning investigative journalist Behar delivers a fast-paced and engaging true-crime story focused on unearthing new evidence to answer long-standing questions about Ponzi-scheme king Bernie Madoff. Covering when the fraud began and who knew what and when in the aftermath, the story unfolds to reveal enablers hiding behind plausible deniability and others demonstrating pure naivete as a multitude of red flags was overlooked. Among the victims were Behar's aunt and uncle as well as a pool of celebrities ranging from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Elie Wiesel. While many conclusions are reached, the one impossible to solve is the mystery that is "Bernie's Brain." The thrill of having a backstage view, watching the twists and turns that come from unraveling the actions of a pathological liar, will hold the attention of a broad audience. The story's appeal stretches from readers who enjoy celebrity gossip and reality TV to businesspeople with ties to the financial industry. Recommended for business collections in public libraries of all sizes.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bernie Madoff was merely the rotten centerpiece of a wider web of scammers, according to this savvy debut. Forbes editor Behar investigates the decades-long Ponzi scheme run by Madoff's fraudulent hedge fund and its 2008 collapse, which wiped out some $20 billion in investors' principal and the life savings of many retirees. Behar skillfully elucidates Madoff's scheme, which took in investors' money, parked it in a JPMorganChase checking account instead of investing it, and paid stellar returns to old investors out of money from new ones; a sizable staff and intense labor were required to buttress the fraud with faked records of stock trades. Centering the book on his decade's worth of interviews with Madoff after his conviction, Behar depicts his subject as a compulsive grifter who dodged questions with muddled bloviating, yet still possessed a manipulative charisma. But in Behar's telling, Madoff was merely the apex predator in an ecosystem of flimflam, which included employees and relatives who helped cook the books; major investors who knew Madoff's operation was a Ponzi scheme, but made huge profits by recruiting other marks into it; and JPMorganChase, which turned a blind eye to evidence of the scam. Behar's entertaining account shows how easily a sociopathic liar will be enabled by a greedy system. (July)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A penetrating account of the web of lies that won the late con man Bernie Madoff his billions. The subtitle notwithstanding, words are likely to be forthcoming still about Madoff's crimes. As Forbes contributing editor Behar notes, a court-appointed administrator is busy recovering the billions of dollars Madoff distributed in his massive Ponzi scheme, which robbed countless people, among them Elie Wiesel, Sandy Koufax, and Steven Spielberg. That so many of Madoff's victims were Jewish was itself a swindle, for Madoff well knew that "Jews through the centuries…, due to persecutions in country after country, tend to trust fellow Jews more than others simply because they are Jewish." For all that, Behar, who visited Madoff in prison and exchanged emails and phone calls over several years, has an odd sort of empathy with his subject. He notes that a couple of Mafia dons with actual blood on their hands who did time alongside Madoff earned lighter sentences, in part, it seems, because the judge who sentenced Madoff to 150 years in prison was determined that Madoff never see free daylight again. Empathy or no, Behar enumerates Madoff's extensive lies, tracing his network of fraud far back in time and implicating a number of accomplices, noting that 13 associates and two external accountants received sentences as well. "It's tempting and perhaps common sense to dismiss everything Bernie says as bullshit," writes the author; in this, Madoff and Donald Trump are blood kin (Behar isn't shy to venture into this territory). Of particular interest, apart from Behar's deep dive into the mechanics of the scheme, is his complimentary account of how the Securities and Exchange Commission, always strapped for cash and hated by the free-marketeers of the GOP, managed to bring Madoff down. A well-written, swift-moving story of true crime and punishment. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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