Bernie Madoff: How to BURN 65.000.000.000 Dollars | The Great Pretender | FD Finance

light years away from the small time swindlers who are more than happy with a bit of easy money are the white collar criminals who over several years managed to accumulate astronomical illegal gains the weapons they use systematically are psychology persuasion and seduction today we live in a show business Society an atmosphere in which an impostor is totally in his element imbued with his own self-esteem the imposter's motivations often surpass any type of rationale for him it's a sort of a game of course the eventual profits ATT tempting but at a certain point the Temptation doesn't amount to very much is money the real motivation behind all swindlers or imposters I think it's actually what the money [Music] represents New York December the 11th 2008 the FBI arrests one of of the world's most highly respected financiers accused of mounting an enormous scam Bernard mof The Man worth $50 billion mid's arrest made the front page CNN almost immediately did a story about the FBI's surprise arrest of finer Bernard mid we were in a period of financial crisis and every day brought more bankruptcies and yet M's victims kept saying they weren't worried because their money was safe with them and they could get it back they had no idea that the tons of money that they had entrusted to him were all gone people were ruined from one day to the next and they wanted made head although the 19th and 20th centuries had their fair share of more or less spectacular Financial scams that of the 21st century engineered by Bernard Midol was the most explosive of all he's manipulative he uses his ability to connect well with people people as a way of also trying to um to get his own agenda across people that generally were going into Wall Street started the maor firms they they came from families of privilege uh they also went to some of the top schools and so this is what ushered in their their career into the Securities industry M didn't have that tight oper in order to understand how this gigantic Swindle could have lasted for more than 20 years and concerned so many people it's important to delve into the psychology and the motivations behind this extraordinary criminal we will do so thanks to exclusive interviews with individuals who had contact with maid off over several years among them Eugen sutz a professor of management at Harvard University who has published a book dealing with white collar criminals and who recorded numerous conversations with Midol starting from scratch type of entrepreneurial type of Enterprise where you know you start out not exact at least in my part not exactly sure what I wanted to do in life other than be a success unlike many of the cases of of fraud he knew his victims these were family these were friends these were members of the Jewish community so they were intimately close individuals that he was ultimately harming and so that's really different from a lot of other cases of white collor crime in which the victims that are actually harmed by these executives are distant and far away in the executive doesn't really have to see them or know them in order to cause the harm to them his arrest took place during a financial crisis after the most colossal bankruptcy in Wall Street history the failure of Leman Brothers the maid of debacle was the straw that broke the camels back the following day he was released on bail both small and large investors were speechless as journalists were ready to Lynch him Colleen eron corresponded with maid off for more than four years and is preparing a book on the subject made coming out of his apartment and the media was surrounding him so tightly that that they got into his space and they pushed him back to get the to get the shots what would you say to them so they the media the media often described the anger of the investors as rage there was this baing mob kind of crowd mentality that they wanted blood they wanted a lynching you had this man who was the face of wall Street there who was evil they camped outside of his Penthouse with signs that said Bernie it's not too late jump the Press demonized him comparing him to the Joker in Batman and the effect of maid's unimaginable fraud on his victims was equivalent to an earthquake it was a tornado in a hurricane in a uh tsunami everybody just was stunned that this had happened they could not believe this guy who everybody seemed to think was trustworthy had been doing this for so long was a crook it was cataclysmic I want him to go into a jail cell and I want him to sit there and you know what he shouldn't be sitting with his Apple computer and he shouldn't be sitting in his $7 million Penthouse apartment we have people in our group who literally do not know where they're going to be living in two or 3 months they have maybe two or 3 months of liquidity Helen Chatman is a lawyer presenting 300 of maid off's victims she also invested with maid off and remembers the day he was arrested it's one of these moments that you'll never forget it's like where were you when um the the planes crashed into the World Trade Center it was so shocking to think that I had just like that lost all of my savings it took me um a week or two before I could really deal with it it was quite shocking we are going to enter Bernard mof's head in order to understand how he managed to defy the highest authorities in the American Financial Market it's here on Third Avenue in the legendary lipstick building that maid set up his investment [Music] fund it was from these offices that he orchestrated one of the Century's most gigantic scams day after day for 20 years he succeeded in sucking in tens of thousands of victims the fraud was based on a simple pyramid operation known as a Ponzi scheme named after Charles Ponzi an Italian immigrant who used the same procedure in the 1920s Charles Ponzi a penniless swindler founded a finance [Music] company his slogan was lend me your money and earn 50% [Music] interest within a few weeks 30,000 people usted him with $10 million his immense newly acquired Fortune aroused the suspicion of the press here's what the investigators discovered he used the money received from his new investors to pay the older ones it was the first Finance chain the Ponzi chain but when there weren't enough new investors to pay dividends to the old ones everything collapsed [Music] Bernard maof employed the same technique paying his clients regular revenues of more than 10% thanks to the money received from new arrivals I had uh six clients that had invested with uh with Bernard maid off and they all in they didn't invest through feeder funds they invested with him directly uh the Investments range from about I think about a million half dollars was the smallest investment and maybe $1.8 million and the largest was about 75 or $80 million more than 10% in the world of Finance is more than interesting making certain wealth managers who had the possibility of meeting made off somewhat wary one such manager met with him in 2005 the funds manager noticed that there was a sort of sculpture in mof's office representing a screw when he asked mid why a screw he answered you know that screw is another word for the FW and it's a screw because that's what I do I screw people screw because I screw [Music] people Palm Beach in Florida was where madeof would go on weekends in search of new victims this beach resort town for multi-millionaires is the epitome of chic and glamour filled with palm trees Yachts hotels and exclusive private clubs whose members were mainly retirees ready to invest in Charities as well as investment funds it's a place where former Wall Street professionals spend their retirement years and so mid off's new recruits in reality had the same background as maid off himself although they were for the most part retired Palm Beach is an American shamon Geneva or sope a sort of General representation of wealthy seniors who in addition were very community-minded since they were an integral part of the Jewish Community an ideal hunting ground for madeof Mid off quickly realized the benefits he could acquire by integrating this community he enjoyed showing himself at Palace hotels and clubs and using his reputation as a top-notch war Street financia in Palm Beach his nickname was Uncle [Music] Bernie Bernard mid was highly regarded and admired in Wall Street circles he was an Insider who knew the workings of the system people would say Bernie's good he knows stuff that we don't know and he only swindled people he was close to from the same community and who had confidence in him you call call fraud by Affinity meaning that he swindled primarily and with great success the Jewish Community he spindled people he played golf with and people with whom he organized charitable operations that was his great strength midaf was a very fascinating person his the scope of his crime was so massive he ended up having 64,000 people as victims they either invested Direct ly or they invested indirectly through feeder funds he invested for many of the royal families in Europe for many of the aristocratic families in Europe and you have to ask yourself how did this little Jewish man from New York manage to Swindle so many people Midol became a member of the Palm Beach Country Club reserved for Ultra Rich philanthropists the Initiation fee was $400,000 to get in and and you have to demonstrate that you have given at least that amount of money to charity within the last 5 years each year when you join a club especially in the US you immediately have everyone's confidence it's a very open society which allows you to join if you have a good reputation and a great deal of money and he used this sort of social polish effectively to recr he's a captivating individual to be around he's cordial he's smart he's brilliant he's he's Pleasant he's nice in in a lot of ways we we would enjoy a conversation with him and he used all that to to be able to take in more money in addition to swindling Florida millionaires he also attracted celebrities tempted by the investment of the century including Steven Spielberg John malovich and Ellie visel how and with what techniques was he able to lure so many worldly wise personalities [Music] they were all telling each other how wonderful he was so it wasn't even that Bernie ma off had to convince all of these individual investors they heard from each other hey you have to get on Bernie's fund because he's producing 10 to 15% he's wonderful um and this took place in synagogues it took place in Palm Beach it took place on Long Island whenever they needed to redeem their money they got it back so there was no red flag for many of them that this that this could be um a potential a potential scam and he always adopted the same strategy flaunting his fund as being very exclusive making his victim think he was a privileged person and especially making himself inaccessible when you got to see mid you'd always say that there was no place available for your investment and that he therefore couldn't do anything for you thus frustrating his future victims during the second contact however he would say I might have a little place open if you still want to invest the client was happy flattered and willing to invest twice the original amount and then he'd add whatever you do don't tell anybody if you tell anyone whether it's a four-year-old child no you can't have a lollipop or a 40-year-old entrepreneur no I won't take your money and invest it the recipient of that news becomes absolutely desperate so that's how he persuaded people to invest with him he employed a very simple reflex every investor wants to make more money and with a return as consistent as possible he didn't go out and solicit people people were throwing money at him around here they all wanted to be part of this deal although rich clients had Direct contact with maid off more modest investors never even met him but entrusted their money to financial firms that had invested with maof and I said uh who is B who is Bernard madeof and what does he have to do with me and he said well all the money that you invested in this feeder fund was invested with made and it's all it's all gone away so uh that was a little upsetting I lost $400,000 so I'm one of the smaller Steven Greenspan was a collateral victim of the scam ironically this psychologist had been working for years on the subject of credibility he ended up losing a large part of his savings one of the uh clever things about maid off he didn't promise huge returns 10% a year that's forever I mean that's a very nice return that's better than most Investments but it's not like some of these hedge funds might make 50% or 100% a year uh no he knew that the kind of people who he was uh taking advantage of would be suspicious about something like that the fact that the returns were good but modest were U attractive to them so he was a good psychologist most successful kind men are good psychologists they know that people uh tend to be trusting and they also know that people uh tend to be too polite to say wait a minute uh you're lying I can't I don't believe you the question is how how did he manage to to bring the these people into his in investment investment scheme what he always would tell people is that I I can't take your money I I can't take anymore now at the time it's because he probably genuinely couldn't take in any more money and so that was you could say a legitimate way of of saying well if you invest in me I could lose everything because I can't take in any more money so that protects him this self- protection technique managed to convince even his most intelligent victims [Music] the swindler or imposter also reveals the greed of his victim so there's often a mirror image between the imposters and their prey people need a form of recognition and frequenting made off satisfy this need they let themselves be swindled because they found what they were seeking although his victims Tred to to capture mid off's attention maid had only contempt for them he doesn't have any feeling for the victims his view is that whatever they got was more than they deserved mid confirms this in exclusive recordings from his jail cell in North Carolina it was the people that came in very late in the game that that that got hurt did I make a lot of money for people yeah I made a lot of money to people you know did people lose profits that they thought they made yes but did they lose Capital I'm sure I'm confident that when this thing is all finished very few people if any will lose their principle a cynical view of his victims after all he felt the very wealthy didn't invest all their money with him so it wasn't that serious and as for the most modest victims whom he ruined he said when you promise an annual return of 10% there's obviously something wrong they shouldn't have trusted me it's a Machiavellian way of looking at it without Scruples or guilt feelings I don't think you can be a successful swindler if you feel guilt Bernard maof has always been devoid of any remorse but where does this swindler come from and what circumstances motivated him to launch such a gigantic scam he offers a few elements of the answer from his prison cell because of my beginnings and because of we had to have been in a business that was hard to break into in a sense that it was controlled pretty much by you know the establishment and I clearly was an outsider of that establishment not coming from you know money or not certainly coming from even a connected family Midol was born in 1938 into a modest family of Eastern European immigrants he resented not coming from a wealthy environment which would have enabled him to attend an elite University and to have important connections his background is largely unremarkable as far as his uh childhood and teenage years he he grew up in a a lower middle class family in Queens he went to a public school um He was largely liked he was member of the swimming team um had good relationships with the girls uh but I don't think there were any indicators at that point that he was destined to become any huge mover and Shaker on Wall Street it's a good he grew up feeling somewhat deprived since he would have liked to be able to go on to postgraduate studies he felt socially frustrated because he knew he could never belong to High Society his father had some professional problems and so he was bent on a sort of societal Revenge mid only possessed two diplomas a lifeguard certificate and a bachelor's degree in political science he married Ruth a girly in high school who was outgoing funny and much less shy than he was they got married in the town in Queens where they came from Laurelton and moved to a small flat in Bayside Queens maid off however already aspired to greater things thanks to his father-in-law an accountant he created his first client portfolio maid off therefore could open an investment firm at the age of 22 although he was still employed as a lifeguard on the beaches of Long Island he really worked from the ground up starting a a small business trading these stocks that were were off exchange and actually from that he actually became a important and pretty Innovative person in the Securities industry a lot of the things that we actually celebrate both in the United States but globally in terms of making stocks easier to trade and cheaper to trade off exchange were because of innovations that occurred at Bernie made offs firm and so he created this incredibly successful brokerage firm it one point he was actually trading 10% of all the New York Stock Exchange listed shares at his firm kind of story Americans love a lifeguard who becomes one of the kings of Wall Street although his company did very well he wanted even more he was a very good broker he made a lot of money because he computerized a certain number of tasks that were being done manually his firm grew but he was only a Trader a minor profession somewhat looked down upon by the important Financial establishments he knew he was seen as an implementor and not a Creator this frustration encouraged mid off to diversify in his attempt to enter the world of investors among the first to understand that thanks to computers the stock market would never be the same he participated in the founding of the NASDAQ the first totally computerized electronic Market he rose up the Wall Street ladder and became vice president of the NASDAQ and thus became a major player who had the confidence of the Market's financial institutions mid had a whole laundry list of different chairmanships uh NASDAQ uh one of the major security uh dealer organizations uh that laundry list can go on he was at one point uh over-the-counter man man of the year one of the highest prayed exe we could we could create a whole CV of accolades that Bernie made off uh received he was in a world when no one suspected him as part of the systems inner workings he was beyond suspicion Midol obtained authentic legitimacy on Wall Street and the recognition of his peers his primary motivation however was not the money I don't think he was that greedy because when you look at the money he redistributed before his downfall you see that he sometimes used his own savings that wasn't his mechanism he had a sort of Detachment concerning money which was one of the keys to his Swindle to him money after all money he was privileged I think when it comes to money I mean he was at a level like like many prominent white color offenders where money doesn't really matter anymore he was still considered one of the higher paid individuals on Wall Street he lived a very very comfortable life and so the question is was it for money I don't think it was money was it for Prestige or fame he actually didn't gr get a lot of accolades you could say from from in a public set it was from the investors he was actually working for that did appreciate him imbued with his success made off set up his Empire over three floors in the lipstick building the 18th and 19th floors were for brokerage but the 17th nicknamed the cage was reserved for his illegal activities concerning his investment funds the separation of maid off's legitimate Market making business from um the floor where in which he had his Ponzi scheme was very deliberate and almost like a Chinese wall separated moff had his Ponzi scheme effectively operating on an outdated IBM producing fake reports and um phony uh confirmations of Trades and so the two the two employees groups of employees would not intersect with each other there was there was really stereo silence throughout his Ascension Midol believed so strongly in his lucky star that nothing could stop the infernal spiral in which he was engaged something he half admits to because of the success I had and because I was sort of always going up against difficult odds I probably didn't think long and hard enough about some of the things that I did like you know getting into the problem where I started to uh come go off the tracks and uh I was able to convince myself that this was you know a temporary situation and because of all my success I sort of was going to be able to continue to do that and probably you know just didn't give it enough thought his success duped even the the Security and Exchange Commission not only did maid off gain its confidence he even became their main consultant on financial transparency and control rules and participated shamelessly in all their meetings and I genuinely believe that most practitioners in the marketplace want to comply with the rules they're not trying to disadvantage anybody moff was able to work with the people at the SEC and tell them what had to be done and they would pass regulations that he told them to pass in my opinion that's not just a mistake that's someone controlling the investigation and protecting made of he was trusted and that relationship of trust enabled them enabled him to um uh not be scrutinized as thoroughly as he should have been he was was investigated something like 10 to 12 times the sec's investigations however yielded nothing and for a good reason investigators never went up to the 17th Floor the officers of madeof secret investment fund he could always count on the nearsightedness of the authorities and of his employees who didn't seem to be aware of the scam he rewarded his employees well so that way they wouldn't speak he kept them deliberately in the dark paradoxes of people thought a lot of people thought he was a nice person he was generous to his staff but um obviously someone who had empathy for other human beings could not have done what he did his well oiled system enabled him to live a luxurious life totally free of guilt or shame he owned a penthouse apartment near Central Park a villa on Long Island another at Palm Beach and a yacht he frequented the hotel bars in the finance District matter welcome back good to see you sir and was invited to all the high society events and charity garas he went to The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach regularly behaving like a prince and not wanting to be disturbed by unimportant people and yet how did his victims view him was he a big spender the he didn't have the Chic of a certain number of Finance professionals nor the arrogance or the $110,000 suit he wasn't like that and that was one of the keys to his Swindle because when you see someone who's a big spender you feel he's doing so with your money most of his victims considered maid off to be a good and rigorous manager because they felt that the commissions he earned through them were not being wasted which they thought was a healthy sign in addition he and his wife's favorite dining place was a simple friendly and unpretentious Italian restaurant the primola they would always arrive at 6:30 in the evening ask for him chicken and glass of red wine he drank very little alcohol and for her fish they would stay there for an hour and leave a normal 20% tip they had a very pleasant daily lifestyle but without any frenetic [Music] spending the made offs were wealthy people they had multiple homes um they had shares in a in a jet they had Yachts however if you also think about um the hedge fund managers at this time the type of wealth that they had um the moffs were not extraordinarily different or more lavish they they led by hedge fund standards a relatively modest life and so what was maid off's true nature what went on inside his head while he was cheating his victims Beyond societal Revenge what motivated him he was an agitator and he was someone who would master all the elements of his fiction to such a point that he believed it the moment he aspired to Greatness and the domination of the sector was the moment that The Madness of speculation took over mid adopted an imperial attitude considering himself above the norm something he readily admits to just being able to sort of succeed in that and then you know all of a sudden having you know a mindset where you feel you can almost accomplish you know anything and I built my confidence up to a level where I felt that you know there was nothing that I couldn't attain and it became like a challenge for me to sort of uh go up against The Establishment and try and break into the business nothing he could not attain a cold-hearted monster journalists and psychologists have suggested a number of hypotheses a psychopath a schizophrenic a sociopath which pathology does he suffer from I think that there are certain indicators of psychopathy one of which is a manipulative Charming personality that conceals an ulterior motive um another is pathological lying um however we can find these types of behaviors in many people who do not engage in crimes who are simply good business people um that's part of part of the game he certainly has been little bit obsessive compulsive for example he could not have the blinds uh improperly closed in his office he had to have the color schemes a certain way heat schizophrenic in the sense that he felt trapped which is what he thought when his scheme was no longer functioning what he did though was go even further in his illegal operations by going global and Gathering even more funds to serve his interest and so that nobody would discover his scam a disorderly desk erases or lowered shutters could infuriate maof although he presented himself as a gentle and warm person Uncle Bernie was found to be distant maniacal and calculating I've met Bernard mid off two times he's quiet did not seem to want to talk very much uh was not very engaging when I met him not chatty as we say so it's not the kind of guy that would come up and slap your back and say hey pal let's have a drink together uh you know somebody even told me one time that he did not like going to the Palm Beach Country Club that much because everybody wanted to talk to him about the Investments and he didn't want to discuss it he claimed that he only came there to play golf the Polish of a respectable and respected individual ual began to tarnish when financial analyst Harry maropis sent four successive reports to the powerful SEC between 1999 and 2008 he tried to convince the commission's authorities that maid off's funds concealed the world's largest Swindle his efforts were vain as these reports were never taken into account I ask unfortunately as they didn't respond to my written submission in 2000 2001 2005 2007 and 2008 here we are today a fraud that should have been stopped at under $7 billion in 2000 has now grown to $50 billion some clients also began to have their doubts well my client was concerned that there might be something illegal going on this particular client got upset when his returns went down to like eight or 10 per. what I did is I asked him you know what do you how do you do this and he said well um I don't tell you that that's proprietary which I expected him to say and so I said what can I tell my client to give him some comfort that everything's okay so maid off said this he said I can make money when the market goes up I can make money when the market goes down I can't make money when the market stays flat Bernard maof always ducked his client questions responding in an evasive manner until the summer of 2008 when clients became more and more insistent he had some very serious alerts he knew he couldn't pay his clients and started digging into his personal funds he was up against the wall he told some of them that the times were temporarily difficult and he tried to convince them to keep their money in his fund from that summer on he sank further into himself and very quickly realized at the end had come after the collapse of the Leman Brothers firm the financial crisis deepened and Maid off's clients demanded the return of their Capital mid had to find7 billion which he knew was impossible when the crisis increased Financial firms Bank customers and managers who had invested in the stock market found themselves confronted with huge losses and they turned to the money they' invested with made to recover part of their Capital it was at that moment faced with the enormous number of selloff Demands that mid realized he couldn't continue the money didn't exist mad knew then that it was all over and that the bubble was about to burst on December the 10th 2008 a cornered maof called in his two sons who had worked for him and confessed what he had done he knew the the scheme was going to collapse imminently the FBI was going to show up at his Penthouse door eventually so I think that the degree to which he choreographed it was very smart um he told his brother Peter first about it and then he told his sons they turned that they were the ones to turn in their father allowing his children to denounce him was for made off a way of protecting them by removing all suspicion concerning their involvement it was also a way of ending a scheme which was sapping his strength he told him this has got to end it can't go on since he was in deep trouble he no longer could honor his financial obligations mid seemed to feel that this event represented a sort of Salvation a great relief as if he always knew that it couldn't last forever and then one day it was bound to to explode and in a way the sooner the better once he had revealed the truth to his children he knew he only had a few hours of Freedom left oddly enough he preferred to spend this time with his employees at his company's Christmas party he knew his Swindle would make the front page the next day or the day after and that the police would then arrive and yet he needed a happy moment he was a cheat who from the outset liked to play a role a role he continued to play to the end when you're the only one to know that the next day everything would come to an end and you see people drinking champagne enjoy it play with the kids because his Christmas year he knew the curtain was about to fall and yet he played his role to the very end even during his final moments of Freedom Midol wanted to control and preserve his respectability until the very end he remained part of the exclusive Inner Circle of prestigious financiers and was even suggested for the future presidency of the SEC arrested on the morning of December the 11th he was released in exchange for a $10 million bail and the requirement of not leaving his Penthouse apartment it was there that maid received phone call after phone call with a multitude of reporters in front of his building feeling harassed encircled and helpless he tried to commit suicide with medson on Christmas day she I think made of suicide attempt failed because he had no guilt feelings if you commit suicide it's because you feel guilt towards your victims which was not his case for most people this failed suicide attempt was just another one of his scams he actually did have at some point some genuine optimism that he always came from behind and always managed to get out of the hall in June of 2009 the long awaited trial began made off decid Ed to plead guilty in order to reduce his sentence in American law a guilty plea means no debate and no investigation he declared throughout the trial that he acted alone without any complicity I think it was an intelligent defense since it put an immediate stop to any sort of inquiry this made a number of scenarios possible was he protecting people was he protecting himself in a way it seems to me to be totally impossible that the scheme was the work of just one person did he address his victims actually he seemed to have no compassion at all for them did he show any remorse on the contrary he was combative and he said that in a way they deserved what they got you could say that he didn't share the here or apologize his feeling was well it's all part of the game mid off himself um you know said that he tried to apologize to his victims certainly he knew he told me that he remembers seeing the Bernie jump signs and How Deeply that was wounding but mid off also you know had a an ambivalent attitudes towards his victims to the degree of which he was felt sorry but also felt angry there was there was an intersection between those two things mid not only showed no remorse but he has never even weighed the severe damage he caused he commented on this from his prison [Music] cell or wasn't frightened enough to say to myself I can't do this I can't take the risk or I shouldn't be taking the risk because uh clearly I didn't give enough thought to to that when I look back uh I couldn't have said no you know it wasn't like I was being blackmailed you know into doing something or I was afraid even afraid of sort of getting getting caught doing I sort of rationalized that what I was doing was okay you know it wasn't going to hurt anybody it was a temporary thing and because of the success that I've had and the money I made for people I sort of felt it was just sort of the uh you know a temporary situation acceptable sentenced to 150 years he was transferred to a prison in North Carolina where he quickly gained a semblance of respectability with his fellow inmates although he considered his sentence as unjust in prison people respect him uh because he was one of the greatest Financial villains in history on that account he's also a brilliant Guy where people can look to for you you could say Financial advice and so at one point he was actually one of the people writing the commentary the the store he's looked as probably one of the most Savvy business people within the prison he's not as willing to talk about his current situation with me um in the prison by all accounts he has not had a difficult time of it it's a medium Federal Security uh medium federal prison and so he's been largely well-received by the inmates allegedly he is somewhat of a celebrity because he's receiv received so much media attention um he does though Express to me his anger at the Double what he perceives to be a double standard between and I think he has a legitimate very valid point HSBC the global bank paid about $1.5 billion doar in fines because they were involved in Terrorist financing and um money laundering for cartels are there any HSBC Executives in prison no he will never leave prison but rather than simply trying to survive he prefers his favorite pastime managing other people's money lately he has entered the hot chocolate Market by purchasing all the packets of the Swiss brand Miss and selling them at a higher price in the prison Courtyard it's a pathology as I see it he's a compulsive obsessive neurotic he needs to airm himself in the eyes of others and make himself indispensable he very often has an intimate need to cheat to succeed on the basis of a personality which is not his own the Imposter by seducing others actually seduces himself some people nevertheless wonder about his uncommon ability to attract the sympathy of other inmates only 10 billion of the $50 billion dollars taken in have resurfaced those who profited from the scheme are not about to be identified some of mof's fellow inmates are Mafia leaders who are undoubtedly there to guarantee his silence and so I don't know what he did but on several occasions in front of judges he energetically refused to implicate anybody else insisting no I take full responsibility I did it all alone enormous sums of money have disappeared and where it went is a mystery he protects himself of course they're all criminals but the biggest of all is made of himself during his detention he learned that his son had committed suicide on the same date as his father's arrest in 2010 4 years later on September the 3rd 2014 his second son died of cancer that same day made of cord Eugene sutz it was a terrible tragedy but once again he did not break down the phone rang this is a call from a federal prison would you like to accept I accept accepted naturally and it was Bernie and this was one that was just really it immediately just kind of stepped back I'm reading the story online about his son just hours earlier passing away and it it's his father calling this isn't Bernie made off calling anymore this is a father that's calling that I'm reading an article about his recently deceased son I don't know what to say I'm actually speechless and he says you know I'm I'm fine I'm fine so on Wednesday we were talking about interest rates could we go back to that and then for the next our calls are limited to 15 minutes for the next 10 minutes he he has some detailed test technical questions about interest rates this shows just how he's able to compartmentalize news whether it's the most terrible tragic news one could ever hear whether it's great news it's it happens I compartmentalize I put in the box and then let's move on he he's lost you could say his family he's lost everything and you'd expect it would destroy someone Bernie manof never sees I'll say reality in the maybe the same way that many people expect him to there are mixed opinions regarding his wife's role as she was present every day in the lipstick building it's hard to imagine that she was totally unaware she never asked for a divorce but her fate was tragic her two son's dead her husband in prison and her own life in shambles just a few days before the whole thing Came Crashing Down uh he got his wife to move some money around lot of cynical people uh assumed she had to be in on it obviously I don't know but uh I can believe that she was innocent that she didn't know what was going on I'm not so quick to blame her it turned out I was right I don't think there's any evidence that she was involved so she was a victim also she was never directly implicated in it um there have been lots of allegations swirling around her she was treated very very very very uh deplorably by the Tabloid press for instance they hounded her when she was taking out the garbage or when she was just on the subway and things like that his wife said she didn't know anything come on considering the closeness he had with his wife one can legitimately ask whether or not she was informed not about the specifics but the fact that what her husband was doing was complet frul mid will go down in history as the biggest white collar criminal of all time although his motivations will remain mysterious even for those who continue to communicate with him when you think of a financial fraud when we think of the white collar Criminal made off is the the financial Mastermind villain when it comes to this and it's a fair description of him and that he did devastate many many people uh both financially but we see the physical harm to this day mid tries to minimize his responsibility in the massive fraud he orchestrated making the financial system the scapegoat Colleen Erin reads one of the first letters he wrote on the subject I'm convinced that something must be done to better understand how individuals such as I get in the situation I am in it seems that this is the missing link and the potential solution to the crisis that grips the financial landscape it is much easier to Simply claim that there are just bad seeds and nothing can be done about it I know in my mind I do not fall into this category it would be so much easier for my own peace of mind to just believe this instead I spend every day trying to understand how I allowed myself to do what I did yes I am guilty of my crime I never attempted to deny this yes I was pushed into it with the help of others but that does not get at the root of the problem nor does it offer any prevention it is unfortunate that that these are the facts of life in our Judicial System the prosecutor only wants to prosecute and build a case that will enable a win the judge never receives the necessary facts and conditions that created the case what makes it worse is that in financial crimes there is little understanding of the financial landscape I could go on forever but you get my point Bernard maof will forever be a legend among white collar criminals his unique pathology will prevent him from ever taking full responsibility for the largest Swindle of all time although he fascinates Specialists by his ability to mask his dishonesty he is paying a high price as are those close to him as a prisoner of his own mentality he will undoubtedly never for a moment reveal what he did with the majority of the money he collected a secret He Will Carry with him to the Grave [Music] [Music]