The perpetrator of possibly the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, Bernard Madoff, also known as Bernie Madoff, reportedly has passed away. Madoff died in prison while serving his 150-year sentence at the age of 82.
Madoff was sentenced in June 2009 and has been held at the Butner prison since. The fraud schemed by Madoff is estimated to come as high as $64.8 billion.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported the news. A spokeswoman for the prison bureau reported that Madoff passed away at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina at around 3:30 AM EDT (0730 GMT).
The bureau warranted that Madoff’s passing was due to natural causes. Noted from Reuters, Madoff is said to have been suffering from terminal kidney disease and several other medical ailments.
Bernie Madoff and the biggest Ponzi scheme: a brief explanation
Madoff was one of the most trustworthy Wall Street kingpins. This, of course, was Madoff’s decoy all while discreetly practising investment fraud to his clients. A crime that his sentencing judge condemn as “extraordinarily evil”.
Bernie Madoff operated his brokerage firm in a Midtown Manhattan tower. Madoff admitted to having done the fraud from the early 1990s. Prosecutors and a lot of his victims, though, argued that it might have started earlier. Employees from Madoff’s firm was happily working as a family, claiming to know nothing about the whole fraud scheme. Apparently, Madoff informed the crime only to a trusted few people.
Madoff’s Ponzi scheme circulates money from newer investors, who would pay a hefty amount of money to the firm, to cover what the firm had owed earlier investors. Soon, Madoff firm’s steady, double-digit annual gains lured in more investors to pour their money for some deals.
Accordingly, the Ponzi scheme provided Madoff and his wife, Ruth, with luxuries. Not only did Madoff and Ruth lived in a Manhattan penthouse, they also owned a French Villa, expensive cars and even yachts. All the luxuries racked up to a combined net worth of about $825 million.
Read also: The Second Biggest US Ponzi Scheme Scandal
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