Bernie Madoff: A Shakespearean Tragedy

The new Netflix series, “Madoff – The Monster of Wall Street”, recovers the story of Biggest financial scammer in American history. By the time his pyramid scheme was discovered, Bernie Madoff had already raised a total of $64 billion. Of the money received over 20 years, don’t invest a single penny: the transactions that appeared on customer statements were all false. In four episodes, the series seeks to shed light on the backstage of the mega operation based on a Ponzi scheme (the name of the Italian immigrant to the United States who invented the system in 1919 in order to illicitly enrich himself). The principle is not even complicated. First, early investors are lured in with the promise of big profits. Afterwards, new investors are attracted, whose money is used to pay the profits owed to the first investors. And so on, widening the base of the pyramid more and more.

shell business

The series signed by Joe Berlinger suffers, perhaps, from an excess of staging – Bernie is almost always seen walking around the office, in slow motion, puffing on his cigar –, but this artifice also serves to illustrate how the business of madoff rested mainly on a gigantic façade. In the final episode, the dismantling of the set and the mischaracterization of the actor works as a perfect analogy: everything consists of a deception. A huge lie that, despite the testimonies of victims, journalists, analysts, leaves more questions than answers in the air. After all, how does anyone manage to deceive regulatory bodies for so long? How does one manage to shake off all suspicions of fraud without being the subject of a thorough investigation? How does someone, just at the cost of being well-spoken and sporting a successful image, manage to convince so many people to believe in him? Read more: Greed is good, according to Gordon Gekko

Seem what you are not

The Internet has other sources where we can look for the answers. On Youtube we find, for example, the testimony of Harry Markopoulos (the analyst who for years denounced Madoff’s fraud without anyone taking him seriously) before the subcommittee for the capital markets. We can also see the interviews with Ruth and Andrew Madoff, included in the “60 Minutes” program, which illustrate the erosion of the family itself, destroyed by disbelief, shame, and relentless media persecution. The journalist, although respectful of the pain of others, does not shy away from asking the difficult questions: how was it possible that none of them realized what was going on? internal weaknesses of the financial system, also serves as a showcase of some striking characteristics of human beings. There are certainly those who still don’t believe that Bernie’s wife and two children could be in the dark about the fraudulent scheme. But Ruth, who met Bernie at 13 and married him at 18, tries to explain that it was all about trust. How to distrust an almost legendary figure on Wall Street? How could you doubt a business that, deep down, represented an entire reputation? Bernie was idolized in financial markets. The children thought he was a genius. Entities appointed him president of scholarships and committees of this and that.

De Niro: The sorcerer of lies

It is undeniable that, consciously or unconsciously, the family enjoyed a sumptuous life. The Madoffs had a penthouse in New York, townhouses in Palm Beach and the south of France, two yachts… Perhaps wealth served to avoid uncomfortable questions, but Bernie is also described, by several people, as an uncontested family man and a man capable of intimidating table-punching. Michelle Pfeiffer, the actress who played the role of Ruth Madoff in “The Wizard of Lies” (Wizard of Lies, 2017), had no doubts in stating that the wife and children of the “monster” had also been victims of a lie.In fact, had it not been for the 2008 crisis, it is likely that Bernie Madoff would never have been caught. In the HBO telefilm, Robert De Niro embodies the character of the con man. The physical resemblance between the two is chilling, and in the scene where Bernie tells his children that part of the family business is an illusion, the actor’s face remains expressionless. Bernie Madoff: The consultant is a fraud. There are no investments. Mark Madoff: What are you saying? Of course there are investments.Bernie Madoff: I made them up.Mark Madoff: What about all our statements? Bernie Madoff: I made them up.Andrew Madoff: I saw the transactions.Bernie Madoff: They’re fake. All fake. It’s really just a huge Ponzi scheme. Ruth Madoff: What is a Ponzi scheme? Bernie Madoff: I’ve taken money from some people, given it to others, and I’ve never… now there’s nothing left. There were supposed to be 50 billion [de dólares]but there is nothing, everything is gone. Also read: 8 movies to learn more about investments

Criminal with no signs of regret

Bernie Madoff was reported to the authorities by their own children. Before the judge, he declared guilty of fraud charges and would end up sentenced to an extraordinary and symbolic 150 years in prison. The Netflix series includes excerpts from interviews Bernie gave while in prison. In the images, without his distinctive suit and tie and dressed in a prison uniform, a defeated man appears to us, but apparently calm and disassociated from emotions. Any regrets? In an interview with journalist Barbara Walters (available on YouTube), Bernie replied that he had no nostalgia for the past. “I have lived the last 20 years in a state of fear,” she confessed. Nobody forced him to do anything, he clarified, but the Ponzi scheme itself had become something of a sentence; after a certain point there was only one flight left for him. “I never meant to do something mean. Things just got out of control… I don’t think I’m a villain or that I’m stupid”, said the man who destroyed the savings of thousands of families.

Couple united (almost) until death

Before being sentenced, Bernie Madoff enjoyed a brief period of freedom, when he left on bail and was able to join the woman who had not been able to abandon him, even though pressured by his children to do so. At night, Ruth and Bernie tried to commit suicide. They took sleeping pills and, hand in hand, watched the movie “Meet Me in St. Louis, 1944” on television, in which Judy Garland sings the immortal song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, until they close their eyes. – We had a good life, didn’t we? Bernie asked. Yes,” Ruth replied. – Until you finished her off. They woke up the next day, because the nightmare of their lives was not yet over.

Madoff: A damn nickname

The Madoff story is a family tragedy that could have been written by Shakespeare. It has all the ingredients: power, money, deceit, betrayal, greed, rise and fall, prison, death. A nickname that gets tarnished forever. In 2010, precisely on the day two years passed after Bernie’s capture, Mark, the youngest son of the Madoffs, hanged himself at home. The event would distance Ruth from her husband, bringing her closer to her remaining son. A year later, Andrew’s cancer, which had gone into remission, reappeared; Despite treatments, the The Madoffs’ last child would eventually die in 2014.The mastermind of the biggest pyramid scheme in financial history would die in jail, in April 2021, of natural causes. She was 82 years old. Amidst the haze of cigar smoke in Madoff’s office, the figure of the transfigured Robert De Niro comes to mind again. “Let me ask you a question: do you think I’m a sociopath?” And maybe what we hear is something else: sociopath or not, how is it possible that so many people fall into the traps set by the Bernie Madoffs of this life? Maybe it has to be that way. If we all mistrusted each other, family life, life in society, it would be perfectly unsustainable. And, after all, as the slogan promoting “The Sorcerer of Lies” reminds us, “only those we trust can truly betray us”.Paulo M. Morais grew up playing street football and listening to proverbs told by his grandmothers. He graduated in Social Communication and specialized in the areas of cinema, videogames and gastronomy. He is the author of novels and non-fiction books. He collects board games and continues to watch many movies. He likes to cook, look at the sea, read. The information contained in the article is not binding and does not invalidate the full reading of documents that support the matter in question.