Mark Madoff Commits Suicide

RJM62

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Geek on the Hill
Dart said:
"Oh, what tangled webs we weave when we practice to deceive" Madoff is a scumbag. This is only the most recent victim of his monumental fraud.
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I know many, many people who were hurt by Madoff. Many of my clients lost loads of money, and two were almost bankrupted.

The two who were hurt the most are professional fundraisers for primarily Jewish charities, and they were financially devastated (along with the charities they served). And just to make matters worse from a personal point of view, both of these individuals are among the kindest, most generous people I've ever known.

-Rich
 
If anything, Madoff proves that "white collar" crime is just as destructive to life (if not more devastating) than some punk robbing a liquor store.
 
The damage Madoff did can be gauged by the fact that on the death of his son, rather than an RIP he gets complaints at how bad his dad was. Son could have been a chip off the old block for all I know, but I will refrain from speculating since he's too dead to defend himself.
 
Dart said:
"Oh, what tangled webs we weave when we practice to deceive" Madoff is a scumbag. This is only the most recent victim of his monumental fraud.
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Half my aunt and uncle's development in Palm Beach Gardens got scammed by him. They are NOT happy.
 
JesseD said:
If anything, Madoff proves that "white collar" crime is just as destructive to life (if not more devastating) than some punk robbing a liquor store.
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If anything a lot of white collar crime is more destructive. Guys like Maddoff, Skilling, Lay, Ebbers, etc all hurt way more people than a punk robbing a liquor store. But the punishments for white collar crimes are far less than what the punk would get for his crime.
 
ScottM said:
If anything a lot of white collar crime is more destructive. Guys like Maddoff, Skilling, Lay, Ebbers, etc all hurt way more people than a punk robbing a liquor store. But the punishments for white collar crimes are far less than what the punk would get for his crime.
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Amen to that. You do wonder what happened to cause him to commit suicide. I figure he was probably ostracized from the society that he was a part on top of not having an easy supply of money anymore.
 
ScottM said:
If anything a lot of white collar crime is more destructive. Guys like Maddoff, Skilling, Lay, Ebbers, etc all hurt way more people than a punk robbing a liquor store. But the punishments for white collar crimes are far less than what the punk would get for his crime.
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White collar crime isn't violent crime. Nobody gets physically harmed nor are their lives threatened. A punk robbing a liquor store usually does so with a gun, and sometimes harms or kills the store owner.

Mark Madoff hung HIMSELF. Nobody forced him to do so. If he was having mental health issues over his Dad's reputation he should have sought help from a mental health professional. This was his doing, not his Dad's.
 
Anthony said:
White collar crime isn't violent crime. Nobody gets physically harmed nor are their lives threatened. A punk robbing a liquor store usually does so with a gun, and sometimes harms or kills the store owner.

Mark Madoff hung HIMSELF. Nobody forced him to do so. If he was having mental health issues over his Dad's reputation he should have sought help from a mental health professional. This was his doing, not his Dad's.
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But what about the people who killed themselves due to being scammed by Madoff? Or who starved, or lost their homes, etc.
 
Anthony said:
White collar crime isn't violent crime. Nobody gets physically harmed nor are their lives threatened. A punk robbing a liquor store usually does so with a gun, and sometimes harms or kills the store owner.
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White collar crime is not overtly violent as you say. But it does not leave its victims unscathed. Many lose everything, their homes, lifestyles, health insurance, etc. It is a distributed violence that is even more insidious and many times more harmful than the localized robbery. None of these guys should be getting off lightly. The white collar criminal who has stolen millions or billions should be right next to the rapist, robber, murderer, etc serving the same length of sentences in the same crappy jails.
 
woodstock said:
But what about the people who killed themselves due to being scammed by Madoff? Or who starved, or lost their homes, etc.
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It was their choice to kill themselves, and I bet that number is very small. This country has places to help people get back on their feet and avoid starving, being homeless etc. Welfare, churches, charities, homeless shelters, friends, relatives, etc.

Any investment is a risk. Unfortunately this risk was larger than could have been forseen. To avoid such unforseen risk, one can invest with a larger, reputable entity like Fidelity, Vanguard, etc. Madoff offered higher retrurns. People are greedy, and they bit. I do feel sorry for them though.
 
Anthony said:
White collar crime isn't violent crime. Nobody gets physically harmed nor are their lives threatened. A punk robbing a liquor store usually does so with a gun, and sometimes harms or kills the store owner.

Mark Madoff hung HIMSELF. Nobody forced him to do so. If he was having mental health issues over his Dad's reputation he should have sought help from a mental health professional. This was his doing, not his Dad's.
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Lighten up, Anthony. I don't know how much time you've spent trying to talk people out of offing themselves, but I do it on a pretty regular basis -- not always successfully. To say "it was his own doing" is as ignorant a statement as it is an obvious one.

Neither you nor I have any insight into Mark's final thoughts. In view of that, let's not be so callous.

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Lighten up, Anthony. I don't know how much time you've spent trying to talk people out of offing themselves, but I do it on a pretty regular basis -- not always successfully. To say "it was his own doing" is as ignorant a statement as it is an obvious one.

Neither you nor I have any insight into Mark's final thoughts. In view of that, let's not be so callous.

-Rich
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Rich,

I am not trying to be callous, however, suicide is a personal choice. He wasn't murdered. I know a little bit about the subject BTW as its touched my life personally. Yes, we do not know the level of torment the man was feeling, and its a very, very complex subject. My point is that when he started to have those thought he should have sought help instead.

Again, I feel sorry for the man and I'm sure his Father's deed my have driven him to what he did. It is very sad indeed.
 
Anthony said:
It was their choice to kill themselves, and I bet that number is very small. This country has places to help people get back on their feet and avoid starving, being homeless etc. Welfare, churches, charities, homeless shelters, friends, relatives, etc.
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Yes and no. There are places that can help, but often asking for that help one has to admit defeat and personal pride will often get in the way. Asking for help is in our society a way of saying that you failed. It is not as easy as one would think.

Anthony said:
Any investment is a risk. Unfortunately this risk was larger than could have been forseen. To avoid such unforseen risk, one can invest with a larger, reputable entity like Fidelity, Vanguard, etc. Madoff offered higher retrurns. People are greedy, and they bit. I do feel sorry for them though.
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I agree with your statement about people being greedy. People far too often hope for the best but often get the worst. But I do not think they deserved this. Madoff was able to get away with his schemes because of a hands off approach by regulators. The free market screwed people over because a free market will do that.
 
ScottM said:
Yes and no. There are places that can help, but often asking for that help one has to admit defeat and personal pride will often get in the way. Asking for help is in our society a way of saying that you failed. It is not as easy as one would think.
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Agreed. Sometimes people just don't know where to turn or what to do. Again, very sad, and I do not mean to sound callous.


I agree with your statement about people being greedy. People far too often hope for the best but often get the worst. But I do not think they deserved this. Madoff was able to get away with his schemes because of a hands off approach by regulators. The free market screwed people over because a free market will do that.
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Yes, the free market will do that. I don't think they "deserved" it either. No system is perfect, and the free market system can greatly reward you or devastate you. Is it "fair". No, but neither is life. We just make the best of it.
 
Anthony said:
Rich,

I am not trying to be callous, however, suicide is a personal choice. He wasn't murdered. I know a little bit about the subject BTW as its touched my life personally. Yes, we do not know the level of torment the man was feeling, and its a very, very complex subject. My point is that when he started to have those thought he should have sought help instead.

Again, I feel sorry for the man and I'm sure his Father's deed my have driven him to what he did. It is very sad indeed.
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It's not always that easy, Anthony.

In Mark Madoff's case, a confluence of emotionally-charged, potential risk factors occurred within a very short period of time, and may have contributed to his suicide: the anniversary of Bernie's arrest, the holidays (holidays are high-risk times for suicides), the recent (December 8th) lawsuit filed against him by the bankruptcy trustee, new rumors that Mark himself might face criminal charges, and possibly others.

If there's anything that almost all suicides have in common, it's a sense of profound hopelessness. Usually it develops over time. But sometimes it can strike quickly, such as when "everything [seems to] fall apart all at once." In those cases, the victims rarely reach out for help. They don't have enough hope left to even do that. If they survive, it's usually out of luck: Someone walks in on them, the rope breaks, the pills are insufficient to kill them, the gun misfires, etc.

I have no idea whether a sudden onset of hopelessness was the case with Mark Madoff. But considering the proximal constellation of events, I think it's a fair possibility.

-Rich
 
Rich,

I will defer to your expertise. Thanks.
 
steingar said:
The damage Madoff did can be gauged by the fact that on the death of his son, rather than an RIP he gets complaints at how bad his dad was. Son could have been a chip off the old block for all I know, but I will refrain from speculating since he's too dead to defend himself.
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I could be wrong, I'm not in a Google mood but, I thought the son's urged him to come forward and reveal his fraud. :dunno:

If so, it just adds to the tragedy of Madoff's criminal life
 
Dart said:
I could be wrong, I'm not in a Google mood but, I thought the son's urged him to come forward and reveal his fraud. :dunno:

If so, it just adds to the tragedy of Madoff's criminal life
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If memory serves me correctly, it was Mark Madoff that went to the authorities and turned his dad in.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
If memory serves me correctly, it was Mark Madoff that went to the authorities and turned his dad in.
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My bet is, history will show that family lived HIGH on the hog for many years. If the sons and wife had any intelligence at all they would have figured the ponzi scheme out along time ago. Maybe Mark did turn his dad in but my guess is he was feeling VERY guilty knowing it was gonna implode soon and tried to look like the good guy........

Every one in that family should be stripped of every cent they own to pay back some of the losses the investors incured.......

I know it sounds cold ,,, but screw the Madoff clan...... And I didn't lose a buck in their con game either.

IMHO.... YMMV

Ben.
 
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Huh? Did Madoff use a gun to get the money?

JesseD said:
If anything, Madoff proves that "white collar" crime is just as destructive to life (if not more devastating) than some punk robbing a liquor store.
Click to expand...
 
Mark and Andrew didn't encourage Bernie to turn himself in. They turned him in themselves the day after he revealed the Ponzi scheme to him. They have not been charged with any crime as of yet, nor has their uncle Peter (Bernie's brother), who also played a prominent role in the business.

Because of the way the "investments" were wrapped, with well-known banks doing the wrapping in many cases, it's certainly possible that neither Peter nor the sons knew exactly what was going on. Or maybe not. No one knows except Peter and Andrew. Bernie apparently didn't think that Mark and Andrew knew, because he felt it necessary to confess it to them.

But bear in mind that Bernie fooled a lot of very smart people for a very long time, with the collusion (whether knowing or otherwise) of some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. His firm also had survived numerous audits by government agencies, watchdog groups, and some of the nation's top accounting firms, including KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BDO Seidman and McGladrey & Pullen. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that Bernie managed to keep the firm's true nature a secret from his sons, as well.

-Rich
​
 
The simple answer is that they were greedy and stupid, not necessarily in that order. Every money manager I know figured out the Madoff scam long before it made the news. I'm still amazed at the number of wealthy people who routinely fall for this stuff. Not the Hollywood types, since most of those airheads can't get in out of the rain, but those who you would think have more sense.
woodstock said:
But what about the people who killed themselves due to being scammed by Madoff? Or who starved, or lost their homes, etc.
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RJM62 said:
... Bernie apparently didn't think that Mark and Andrew knew, because he felt it necessary to confess it to them...
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I think every possibility is ... a possibility.

The story about him confessing to them, and them turning him in ... well, that's _their_ story. It could be true. Alternately, it could be the story they all decided to tell, in order to exonerate the sons and let Dad take the fall all alone.
-harry
 
Anthony said:
Rich,

I will defer to your expertise. Thanks.
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Sorry if I was a jerk, Anthony. I'm no expert. I just have a lot of experience with suicidal people -- not all of it culminating in happy endings.

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Sorry if I was a jerk, Anthony. I'm no expert. I just have a lot of experience with suicidal people -- not all of it culminating in happy endings.

-Rich
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Rich, you weren't a jerk. You definitely have experience with it and I am saddened that they don't always end in happy endings. The mind is a very complex thing.

No worries mate.
 
They interviewed a couple of Madoff's former employees, his chauffeur and one of his managers. Neither is at all employable because of the association. The one guy was pulling down a big salary doing honest work, now he and his family are eating baloney sandwiches and drinking cool aide bought with food stamps.

Madoff certainly had a lot of victims.
 
Sad, but don't forget that he reaped substantial lifetime benefits from being Madoff's son. It seems just that the door swings both ways.
 
mantakos said:
Interesting that he was one of the few that profited from his investment in Madoff's "fund".
-harry
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That's not quite true. As with Ponzi schemes in general, many people made serious profits investing money with Madoff. That's why they kept investing. But the ones who made money were smart enough, perceptive enough, or lucky enough to pull their money out before the operation imploded.

Also, not everything Madoff's firm did was illegal. According to the article, the branches that Mark and Andrew worked in were completely and unquestionably legal, and apparently produced quite impressive results -- well above the Wall Street average. That was something I didn't know until I read the article.

Maybe Bernie intentionally shielded the sons from the illegal side. Or maybe he hoped that the profit from the firm's legal ventures would eventually transform the Ponzi scheme into an actual fund, but the lagging economy and the demands of investors for disbursements caused the "fund" to collapse before that could happen.

Of course, that's just speculation. But I do like to read articles like this one, even if they're sad, because I'm interested in the human dimension of these sort of stories once you get past the headlines.

I already know one side of the story in a very human way because quite a few of my clients lost fortunes with Madoff, and a few were essentially ruined. Getting a glimpse of the other side doesn't change that, nor does it change the fact that even if what the sons did was perfectly legal, they still profited from the illegal activities as well.

So I believe the trustee is right to go after Andrew's money and Mark's estate. Perhaps not all of it, as at least some could be considered rightfully theirs as reasonable compensation for actual, completely legal work that they did. But some major portion has to go toward restitution, in my opinion. They may have been honest, but unfortunately, they worked for a crook.

-Rich
 
[climbs onto soapbox]
Whatever Mr. Madoff's problems were, and they were no doubt many and large, in the end he committed the most selfish act imaginable. In ending his life he has taken away the love of a father to his children. One can get a divorce, but as my folks always joke, "you can't choose your parents".
In short, he chose a permanent solution to what was at worst a temporary problem.
By any "normal' person's standards, he had no financial worries to speak of. In the recent years leading up to his final misfortunes, he had earned tens of millions of dollars. Properly managed, something he himself was certainly well qualified to do, he could have "cut back" to maybe just one (or two) homes, in areas other than New York City or Nantucket, and lived a lifestyle that 98% of Americans still can only dream of, and never work another day in his life.
His father's crimes were his father's crimes, not his. So what id he could not get a job in the securities business, raise chinchillas, start a flight school. Move to Florida and raise your kids, for God's sake. To say that he didn't want to do that would absurd. In life, grown ups often have to do what they don't want to do. I don't necessarily want to get up and go to work each day, often in distant and very cold places with horrendous hours. I chose to have a family, and I do what I do so they can benefit. It's the height of hypocrisy to take away the father in the name of shame, or worse, pride.
I do feel sorry for the Mark Madoff family for having to suffer not only the loss of the father and husband, but also for the lifetime stigma that society will forever hold over them for the act Mark Madoff committed as well as the baggage the Madoff name will carry for them. There will always be that uncomfortable moment, that forbidden taboo subject surrounding his demise as well as the question "Why?". [climbs down]

Sorry, did not mean to sound cruel or insensitive on this. I have been in a very tough situation before myself, and I have removed the gun from the hand (literally) of a couple of friends who were not only contemplating pulling the trigger, but were trying to do just that. My boss' son was "successful" in pulling that trigger. I see the effects on him, his wife and their other three sons daily, even 11 years after the fact, especially during the holidays.
 
A. How do we know he actually killed himself?
B. With all that came out after Madoff, I find it hard to get as outraged about Madoff as I did when the news broke. How many have clean hands? Many are ruined, not just Bernie's victims. He did get caught, at least (Bernie).
 
My son works around me every day... He does not know what monies/stocks I have, how much I make, what I pay in taxes, etc... Now, knowing that is the situation with me, I can see how this fellow might have been around the business and believed what dad said... Feeling charitable today, I will give Mark the benefit of the doubt...

I suspect that the regulators are looking carefully at him to determine how much his business benefited from the stolen monies his dad was raking in... I read about the numerous lawsuits he is facing - and he knew his defense lawyers would bleed him for every cent the government did not take first... I suspect it was clear to him that he was going to wind up living in a walk up third floor apartment and driving a used Honda and there would be no country club, no yacht in Florida, etc... (and probably no wife, see below) His actions show that he could not handle the idea of the modest apartment and used car (which for millions of Americans would be a considerable improvement in their lifestyle)

Depression is a fatal disease... The interesting thing about suicide attempts is that most of them, where we (EMR / medical team) managed to pull them back said later that they were glad they didn't succeed... One in particular I remember - that after we saved him, his wife divorced and took the children, his partners took the two corporations from him, he went to prison for 2 years (as CEO he was transferring money from the solvent company to try and save the failing one - a crime for a publicly traded corporation - even the Judge noted that he was not putting company money in his personal pocket so he got a flat 2 year sentence, parole 18 months, instead of the 3 to 5 that would have been normal)... Anyway, he is barred from ever being in officer in a company and his CPA was stripped... Today he is working in a factory, lives in a 2 room apartment, drives a used car, and says he is glad he lived...

His ex-wife says she will have him back when he can put her back in a nice house, a new car, and join the Country Club again... I asked him if he fell and hit his head while in prison... He grinned and said he had bumped his head on the short bunk and it knocked some sense into him... He said he really missed seeing his kids every day but the thought of living with her after she laid that list of demands on him, makes him think that going back to prison would be a better outcome... I suspect that if Mark had lived from his attempt to die, he would have been grateful to be alive down the road...

denny-o
 
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