So, Bernard Madoff says he’s is grateful for the opportunity to speak. He is “painfully aware I have deeply hurt many people” and he “knew this day would come.” (See story here on his 11 guilty pleas.)
He’s not saying what his victims want to hear. Who cares that he’s “deeply sorry,” not explantions of how he really wanted to go straight, end the scam he started in the early 1990s, but he got in too deep.”
That’s cold comfort. Investors don’t want to hear it.
No, they want him to show them the money. What assets are left? Where is the money and how can those whose life savings were swindled gain at least a fraction back?
Who else is involved? Madoff protests that it was him alone who engineered the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, portraying the huge swindle as almost happenstance.
Those protestations are difficult to swallow — as unbelievable as his lawyer’s bid to continue his house arrest. Thanks to U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin for denying it, so clear that Madoff needed to be jailed immediately that he waved off the prosecution’s objection to house arrest: “I don’t need to hear from the government.”
It seems so complex, but really, the whole Ponzi scheme was pretty simple: Madoff took money to “invest” and didn’t. He kept it, adding more “investors” so pay out modest “earnings.” But, when the market tanked and more people wanted money out, the game was up. As Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said, “Apparently, The guy was just a two-bit thief, he just found an elaborate way to cover himself.”
His victims, some of whom went from financially comfortable to destitute, will likely never see their money again.