Richard Behar
Courtesy: Lizzie Cohen
You may not have heard of it Bernie MadoffThe name has been around for a while, but that doesn’t mean The story of a notorious liar It was over, or the pain he had caused.
Court-appointed trustee Irving Picard, 83, is still living out his days Try to get the money back from those who benefited from Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and to reduce the staggering losses of others.
More than 100 legal proceedings continue over the worst fraud in history.
Richard Behar Just Published a New Biography, “Madoff: The Last Word”, still trying to understand how Madoff’s mind worked. What allowed a man to blackmail Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust and went on to become the main chronicler of the Holocaust? Or sitting with my wife, Ruthenjoying a movie in a theater while knowing that he has wiped out the life savings of thousands of people around the world?
These questions have dogged Behar, who told CNBC he has long been fascinated by scammers. He contacted Madoff, long after most other reporters had turned their attention elsewhere, and the financial criminal was serving him. 150 years in prison in North Carolina.
Richard Behar’s book “Madoff: The Last Word.”
Behar first expressed his condolences to Madoff, whose son Mark had just passed away. died He committed suicide in December 2010, the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.
Soon after, an email popped up in Behar’s inbox with the subject line: “Prisoner: Madoff, Bernard L.” The message launched a decade-long relationship that included Approximately 50 phone conversations, hundreds of emails and 3 in-person visits. When Madoff died in April 2021, Behar was still writing his biography. Madoff often complained to Behar that he was taking too long on the book.
“He once joked that he would be dead by the time the book came out, which was of course true, although I never planned it that way,” Behar said.
CNBC spoke with Behar, an award-winning journalist and Forbes investigative editor at large, via email this month. (Conversation has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.)
“He never asked me a personal question”
Anne Nova: You write that you are an investigative reporter with a “particular fondness for scammers.” Why do you think this is?
Richard Behar: I’ve always been fascinated by how con artists’ brains work. I’m particularly interested in con men who steal from those close to them, perhaps obsessively – like Madoff.
A con man I visited in prison in the 1990s did something similar. Before Bernie was arrested, this guy ran the longest Ponzi scheme ever, for 11 years. He was an orphan, raised by his uncles and aunts, but devoured them financially, as well as his cousins, his wife’s parents, his best friends – even his so-called faith in God And the confused nun. I was also not raised by biological parents, I spent my childhood in foster care. I can’t pretend to imagine doing that to the people who stepped up to care about me, but it was endlessly attractive to me. Maybe that’s where people’s love for con men comes from.
Bernard Madoff arrives at Manhattan Federal Court on March 12, 2009 in New York City.
Stephen Chernin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
AN: Was Madoff interested in your life?
RB: In our nearly ten-year relationship, he never asked me any personal questions. It’s really unbelievable. Sometimes I would give him opportunities, such as telling him that I grew up in a small town not far from his hometown—with a similar but poorer Jewish subculture—but he wouldn’t say anything. He couldn’t care less. I asked a psychologist about this, and her theory was that Bernie was such a malignant narcissist that he couldn’t “maintain my reality, he could only maintain his own.” It was impossible for him to be a three-dimensional person because if he could imagine that, he would have to imagine the schoolteacher who lost his pension.
AN: What’s the greatest remorse you’ve seen him show for what he did?
RB: I once asked him if he could ever forgive himself for being a Ponzi schemer, and he said “no, never.” He insists he feels great remorse for those who stole. But I never quite felt it. There was never a tear. I asked him why he didn’t cry during the sentencing, and he snapped: “Of course I didn’t cry. I was made to cry.”
‘Prison was a great relief for him’
AN: How did Madoff say prison life changed him?
RB: He never talked about it. He once described himself as feeling numb. I said, “I can’t imagine what that would be like.” He replied, “You don’t want to know, you don’t want to know.”
In some ways, I think going to jail was a big relief for him. Running a Ponzi scheme for a century and a half can certainly be exhausting. In prison, he usually woke up in his cell around 4 a.m., made coffee in bed with an instant hot water machine, and read or listened to NPR until breakfast. He worked first in the kitchen, then in the laundry room, then managed the inmates’ computer room.
That last job made me laugh because he told me he could barely turn on the computer in his office, which was a red flag to everyone in the company that he wasn’t actually trading stocks.
AN: You wrote about him seeing a therapist in prison. Do we know how often this happens, or how long it lasts? Does this seem to be helping him?
RB: He ended a phone conversation abruptly because he had to attend a weekly appointment with a psychologist. Later he called me and I asked how it was going. He laughed and said it was helpful, that she was a “wonderful lady” and that he thought he should have gone to therapy years ago. But even though the courses were helpful, he said he never found the answers he sought about why he committed the fraud and why he hurt so many people.
NEW YORK – MARCH 12: Financier Bernard Madoff passes by gathered media as he arrives at the Federal Court in Manhattan on March 12, 2009 in New York City. Madoff is expected to plead guilty to all 11 felony counts of financial misconduct brought by prosecutors and could be sentenced to 150 years in prison.
Chris Hondros | Getty Images
He’s upset about news reports calling him “human” sociopath. He said he asked his therapist, “Am I a sociopath? A lot of the clients are friends and family – how could I do this?” Burney claimed she told him that people have the ability to differentiate, Like thugs killing people and then going home and taking their children.
You just put it behind you. I asked her if she had a diagnosis. He said, no, just a divider. Maybe she told him this to make him feel better since he would never be able to get out.
AN: It sounds like Madoff was waiting to be caught for all these years. Is it right? Did he always know he couldn’t escape this? What was it like for him to live in that suspended state?
RB: Bernie said he had been under constant pressure from the Ponzi scheme and would sometimes talk loudly to himself in the office due to the stress. He said one of his biggest ways to relieve stress is to sit in a dark movie theater with his wife, Ruth, and watch movies twice a week. He also said he deceived himself into thinking some “miracle” would bail him out of the Ponzi scheme, but he knew for at least a decade before his arrest that he would never escape the Ponzi scheme.
He said the only time he really relaxes is on the weekends, when he’s on his yacht. I interviewed a former FBI behavioral analysis expert who suggested that Bernie felt safe on the boat because he could see 360 degrees around him, all the way to the horizon, so he would have plenty of early warning of incoming threats.
“Not a single investor” complained to the SEC
AN: You paint a very interesting portrait of Irving Picard, the 83-year-old court-appointed trustee who spent years trying to recover money for Madoff’s investors. Is this the only job Picard has had in years? Why did he make this his life mission?
RB: Picard rarely spoke to the media. I just chatted with John Moscow, the former chief white-collar crime prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who worked on some of the Madoff cases for the trustees. “Owen was a very loyal public servant,” he said. He was completely focused on his mission. John’s words: “He’s not crazy about it, but he’s pretty close.”
In my book, I quote a former federal prosecutor who said you could investigate this case for 50 years and still not learn all the truth, but Picard wasn’t interested. This is Bernie’s only bankruptcy since 2008, four days after his arrest. Soft teddy bear. He might make them pay over time, or he might take someone’s house but leave them a life interest.
AN: What do you think people misunderstand most about Madoff?
RB: Many people who lose money make the mistake of placing the blame solely on him, instead of looking in the mirror and asking themselves how they could have put themselves in such a dangerous situation. Madoff’s sustained high returns were simply not possible. Even so, many net losers believe the government owes them because the SEC didn’t catch Bernie. But the agency’s mission has never been to protect people from stupid investment decisions.
On March 12, 2009, financier Bernard Madoff arrived at the Federal Court in Manhattan, New York. Madoff plans to plead guilty to 11 felonies, which carry a penalty of about 150 years in prison under federal law. (Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)
Stephen Chernin | Getty Images
I mentioned to you that I went to a prison in the 1990s to visit the man who ran the longest Ponzi scheme before Madoff was arrested. Just like Bernie, this con man couldn’t have done it without the complicity of the big banks. One investor complained to the SEC during the 11-year-old Ponzi scheme that he lost money even though he was guaranteed ridiculous returns of 20-25%. The scammer was arrested the next day.
In Bernie’s case, not a single investor in his half-century of fraud ever contacted the SEC. They were busy splashing in the gravy.
