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The Life And Lies Of Bernie Madoff
Harper
August 2009
On Sale: August 1, 2009
320 pages ISBN: 0061870765 EAN: 9780061870767 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
It was an inconceivable deception: over $65
billion stolen in the world's largest Ponzi scheme.
Including new and revealing interviews with those who worked
closest to him and his family, Betrayal is an
in-depth, penetrating look at the man who perpetrated
history's most notorious financial crime.
To the people who knew him, Bernie Madoff was a kind and
honorable person; a loving father and husband; generous to
his employees and charitable even to strangers. On Wall
Street, he was known as a wise elder statesman, wildly
successful in his investments but never too risky with
people's money. He was so revered and trusted that thousands
placed their life savings with him, and he in turn provided
them with early retirements and affluent lifestyles.
But on December 11, 2008, Madoff confessed that he'd
lied to them all. The monthly financial statements he'd sent
customers for decades were all works of fiction. Their money
was gone. Despite the crush of media attention on
Madoff's scam, little is known about Madoff himself. What
could lead a seemingly good man to ruin the lives of
everyone who ever cared about him? What caused Bernie Madoff
to commit an unspeakable act of betrayal, bankrupting his
family, his friends, his mentors, and thousands of investors
who depended upon him for their livelihoods?
Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff is about
the man who realized that he could have everything he wanted
if he simply lied to the people who trusted him the most.
Author Andrew Kirtzman tracked down more than a hundred
people from Madoff's past, from the first girl he ever
kissed to family members who played in his house as
children; from his secretaries to his drivers; from traders
at his company to his inner circle of friends. He pored
through thousands of pages of court records; private
e-mails; phone-conversation transcripts; and census,
military, and immigration records. The result is a
fascinating story about the rise of a deeply immoral man.
Kirtzman describes Madoff's feelings of inferiority
and humiliation as a child, and his obsession with making
money to prove himself worthy as he grew older. He reveals
Madoff's construction of a criminal enterprise at a young
age, long before he's ever claimed it began. He paints a
picture of a loving yet strange family that ran a
multibillion-dollar corporation like a small family
restaurant. He offers an inside look at life within the
company and the characters who worked on the infamous
seventeenth floor. He reveals the details of an underground
flow of cash that no one has known about until now. And he
chronicles the desperate moments leading up to Madoff's
fall, from the perspective of the people who spent the last
hours with him before his house of cards collapsed.
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