Vanity Fair: How Could Madoff Sons Not Have Known About Dad's Scheme?

/Home/Madoff and the Jewish Community/Ruth Madoff

Vanity Fair: How Could Madoff Sons Not Have Known About Dad's Scheme?
Meanwhile, more than 110 of Madoff’s alleged victims want maximum sentence for man they call a ‘monster.’
By The Staff at wowOwow.com

© APWhat did Bernard Madoff’s sons know and when did they know it?

Those are just some of the questions David Margolick is asking for his latest installment of "The Madoff Chronicles" in the July issue of Vanity Fair.

The mag asks:

"The question from everyone connected to Bernie Madoff’s sons is: How could they not have known their father was perpetrating a $65 billion fraud? Both the gregarious Mark, 45, and the more cerebral, tech-savvy Andrew, 43, worked for Bernie their entire careers, yet maintain they’re completely innocent. Talking with their friends, surrogates and former colleagues, the author explores the brothers’ relationship with their strict, secretive father, their different reactions to the scandal, and one possible explanation for the ignorance they claim."

The two Madoff sons have worked together for years, and their personal lives haven’t differed all that much either, but the way they each have handled dad’s demise has. Neither has reportedly spoken to their father since he confessed his sons to them, nor to mom Ruth, because they think she will always side with Bernie no matter what. The investigation into Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities continues, and many expect Mark and Andrew will be indicted. If and when they start talking, more trouble could be coming. Don’t rule out Ruth being in the spotlight, either.

"I think that to some degree, Andrew and maybe Mark feel somewhat liberated by all of this," Margolick said this morning on MSNBC. "They feel they’re finally out from their father’s shadow and perhaps, that’s a victory for them."

Papa Madoff is facing a maximum of 150 years in jail at his June 29 sentencing. And more than 110 of his victims have sent nasty e-mails calling him — and wife Ruth — a "monster," among other things, to the New York judge presiding over his case, asking that Madoff be put away as long as possible.

"It’s like people in the concentration camps during WWII watching the Nazis enjoying themselves using the property, money and other possessions that they had stolen," one female victim wrote, according to the New York Post. Emma De Vita, an 81-year-old widow from Chalfont, PA, called Madoff a "psychopathic, lying egomaniac" who has "condemned his investors to a life of hell."