On the Death of Bernard Madoff

Bernard Madoff mugshot (U.S. Department of Justice)

Bernard Madoff, architect of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, died today, 14 April 2021, at the age of 82.

Madoff died at the Federal Medical Center, part of the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Granville County, North Carolina, where he was serving a 150-year prison sentence.

Since his arrest on December 11, 2008, and through the lengthy trial and conviction, the world has fixated on two elements of Madoff's criminal enterprise:

How could he have sustained his scheme for so long and scaled it to such gargantuan sums and numbers of victims without having been taken down sooner? and

Why did he do it?

The answers we have now, however incomplete, are important. Although they don't in themselves prevent any next fraud of this type or severity.

But more crucially, we must never lose sight of the radical devastating human toll wrought by his actions: suicide, divorce, depression, ruination, incalculable losses beyond the financial. His fraud was far more than a masterfully executed economic crime. It was a massive corruption of trust, an assault on human dignity, the deep injuries of which will reverberate in many families and in society for generations.