Bernie Madoff, Infamous Ponzi Scheme Organizer Dies In Federal Prison At Age 82
According to the Associated Press, Bernie Madoff, the Wall Street financier-turned-Ponzi scheme kingpin, has died.
A source told the news site that Madoff died of natural causes while serving time at a North Carolina federal prison. He was 82 and is survived by his wife, Ruth Madoff.
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Bernie Madoff was known as the Wall Street con artist who masterminded the largest Ponzi scheme in history. His death comes about 12 years into a 150-year prison sentence that stemmed from fraud charges for scheming investors out of an estimated $65 billion in promised returns on $20 billion invested over the years. As NBC News notes, his alleged victims ranged from big names such as Steven Spielberg, actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, New York Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, and L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt to small-time investors who invested their pensions and life savings.
He pleaded guilty in 2009 to a scheme that investigators said started in the early 1970s. At the time it was said he defrauded as many as 37,000 people in 136 countries over four decades by the time Madoff was nabbed on Dec. 11, 2008
His death at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, was also confirmed by the federal Bureau of Prisons.
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