Madoff dough: $65,000 was supposed to go to a donor search for Arenson to find a bone marrow transplant. Arenson has chronic lymphocytic leukemia and his doctors say there is no cure without a transplant.

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Madoff Scam Could Cost Cancer Patient His Life
David Arenson Lost His Savings Which He Hoped to Use on His One Shot at a Cure
By BRIAN ROSS and MADDY SAUER
March 6, 2009

David Arenson was not one of Bernard Madoff's wealthier clients. Arenson, like many investors who got in early with Madoff, only had about $65,000 invested, a far cry from the tens of millions his elite clients had. But that $65,000 was supposed to go to a donor search for Arenson to find a bone marrow transplant. Arenson has chronic lymphocytic leukemia and his doctors say there is no cure without a transplant.


David Arenson invested his money to find a donor for a bone marrow transplant.

"If I expect to live to be as old as Bernie Madoff is, I'm going to need a bone marrow transplant," Arenson told ABC News. "And that money that I had in Madoff, that my family had in Madoff, would've gone a long way to making that doable."

In 2003, 52 year-old Arenson was diagnosed with CLL, the same disease that 60 Minutes' Ed Bradley died of, and was given a prognosis that he would live for another 8 to 15 years. Six years later, he says his illness has left him feeling like a 90 year old man some days.

Arenson said he got a phone call late last year from a relative informing him that Madoff had been arrested, had admitted to running a scam, and that the Arenson family had lost everything.


"It was about the last thing I expected to hear," he said. "I was completely in shock."

Arenson has written about Madoff on his blog, which also details his treatment process.

Ruth Madoff's Parents Recruited Investors
Arenson had no reason not to trust Madoff with his money. After all, he and his relatives were recruited by the parents of Bernard's wife Ruth at a popular resort hotel in the Catskills they frequented.


"There was a family connection there, and a friendliness there," he said.

Ruth Madoff claims that she played no role in her husband's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, but even at her 50th high school reunion last November she wrote in the class book that "Bernie and I worked together in the investment business that he founded in 1960."

Ruth is now trying to convince a judge that she should be able to keep the couple's $7 million penthouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side along with $62 million she says is her own money, not in any way related to her husband's alleged fraud.