In 1960, Bernard Madoff created his investment firm. Four decades later he was considered one of the best investors on Wall Street. But a December 11, 2008 he was arrestedaccused of being the leader of one of the biggest pyramid schemes in history.
Indeed, it was true. Madoff had raised 65 billion dollars thanks to its scheme, which worked like a Swiss watch. However, once everything came to light the story had a fatal outcome.
The worst part of this story had to do with the victims. And many of the investors within his firm They ended up committing suicide after finding out that they lost all their savings.
What was the Madoff scam?
The success behind Madoff’s signing was in his movements. The positive results that his clients saw were not thanks to operations that he carried out, but rather came from what new clients contributed.
So all I needed were two factors: they will add unlimited clientsensuring the continuity of your “bicycle”, and that Not everyone would like to withdraw their funds at the same time.. The first could be easily accomplished, since the economic outlook was prosperous and people risked their money.
Bernie Madoff
Photo: AFP
Madoff had clients all over the world. But it was with Great Recession -the worst financial crisis in the United States since Crash of 29′– that things changed. In that context, all clients wanted to recover their savingsand along the same lines, no one wanted to invest in a time of uncertainty.
This is how the system began to collapse, the whole truth came to light and Madoff had to explain it to his children.. Of course, it was curious that in the middle of one of the worst economic times in history, the father signed more than one hundred million in bonuses for employees for Christmas.
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However, this was a slap in the face with the intention of being able to keep a small portion of the big cake that he had been cooking for years. The children made the decision to hand him over.
Who was William Foxton, one of Madoff’s victims
One of the cases that resonated the most in the Madoff case was that of the war veteran William Foxton. The 65 year old man He shot himself in the head in a park near his home in Southampton.after finding out that he had lost all his savings (an estimated $100,000).
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After passing through the British Navyretired in 1970 and had since worked as a military consultant for the Sultanate of Oman and as volunteer and spokesperson for the United Nations and various NGOs.
“Bernard Madoff has blood on his hands”he wrote on his blog Willard FoxtonWilliam’s son. According to what he later revealed, his father explained to him that he had gotten into a big mess after having invested all his savings in two ‘hedge funds’: the Herald USA Fund and the Herald Luxembourg Fund. “I want you to see that people have died for what he has done”Willard expressed.
Other suicides after Madoff’s pyramid scheme
In addition to William, there were other victims who ended up in the same way. On December 22, Thierry de Villehuchet, 65 year old Frenchman, founder of the management company Access International (AIA), cut his wrists in his New York office, because had lost between 1,000 and 2,000 million dollars.
However, one of the most painful deaths within this scandalous event was Mark MadoffBernard’s son. On December 11, 2010, exactly two years after his arrest, he committed suicide. after not being able to withstand the pressure between the demands he suffered for participating in the event and his father’s secret plot.
Bernie Madoff imprisoned
“I am responsible for Mark’s death and that is very, very difficult. I live with that. I live with the remorse, the pain that I have caused to everyone, of course to my family, and to the victims.“, expressed the scammer from prison in an interview in 2013. Mark had stated on several occasions that he knew nothing of what was happening at Bernard’s firm, although they attributed some 70 million dollars in profits for being part of the company. His brother justified himself in the same way, Andrew, who died of cancer in 2014.
Years after the scam, Bernard’s wife, Ruth Apern, confessed that on Christmas 2008 they both tried to commit suicide with pills.. “I thought ‘I can’t, I can’t do this, I don’t know if I’m going to get through this and I don’t know how I’ll be able to do it, I don’t want to either,’” Apern had described. However, after the failed attempt, Madoff said that having failed, having woken up the next day, opened his eyes.
Source: Ambito
