December 11, 2008 would mark the beginning of a financial nightmare for thousands of people when they learned that investor Bernie Madoff had been arrested for the biggest investment fraud in US history.
While the media initially claimed that the Madoff scandal was estimated at $ 50 billion, prosecutors would later increase the estimate to $ 65 billion lost among its 37,000 victims. Among the prominent personalities, actors, presenters, media giants but also ordinary employees, even non-profit organizations. Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 felonies in 2009, was sentenced to 150 years in prison and died in prison at the age of 82 on April 14, 2021.
Kevin Bacon
One of the first publicities to reveal his deception by Madoff was the actor Kevin Bacon and his wife, Keira Sandwick. The couple lost millions of dollars investing their money as Madoff had shown them with the actor admitting a few years later in a 2017 interview with the Guardian that “It was a bad day”, adding that “very quickly we were able to see all things that we had in contrast to what we lost, and these are the biggest clichés: children, health, love, a nice house. So we spent it together. “I do not think about Madoff at all.”
John Malkovich
When the actor John Malkovich lost his $ 2 million investment, as did fellow actors Bacon and Sandwick, and the problem made him more concerned. “I do not see it as a negative experience,” he told Details magazine in 2013, while in the same year at Vanity Fair he stated that “For me, in all honesty, it was a good life lesson.” In the end, Malkovich received a return of 670 thousand dollars from his investment.
Larry King
King met Madoff through his childhood friend Fred Wilpon, owner of the New York Mets. At that time, the King and his wife were looking for a reputable investment company, and Wilpon suggested that he consider Madoff, but warned him that the stockbroker was known to be particularly selective with his clientele. King clearly knew Madoff’s selectivity, as the latter accepted King into his company but not his brother.
When Madoff was arrested in 2008, the television legend had lost $ 700,000, but managed to recover it within a few years. “If I could interview a person on the planet, it would be Bernie Madoff and the reason is obvious. “I would ask him why did you do this to so many people?” He had revealed. King’s friend Wilpon would have come out of the Madoff scandal in a much worse situation, losing $ 500 million.
Eli Wiesel
Before his death in 2016, the Holocaust survivor and Award winner Peace Nobel, Eli Wiesel, was another famous figure in Madoff’s criminal enterprise. Describing Madoff as “one of the biggest scammers, thieves, liars, criminals,” Wiesel and his wife, Marion, had lost their $ 12 million life savings, along with $ 15 million from their nonprofit, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.
“Could I forgive him? “No,” Wiesel told a media group in New York in 2009 about Madoff. “To forgive, first of all, would mean that he will come to your knees and ask for forgiveness. Something he would never do. “
In 2012, he admitted on the Oprah Winfrey show that “We looked at each other (his wife and himself) and our reaction was: We’ve seen worse,” Wiesel said. “She and I have seen worse.”
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