Bernie Madoff
Two major factors helped Bernie Madoff to run the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. One that lasted, according to some reports, over 50 years. He didn’t promise the outlandish returns that now act as a red flag for most would-be pyramid schemes, and he built a solid financial reputation, even becoming a non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market for a time.
Madoff attracted some very high-profile investors including Steven Spielberg, Kevin Bacon, and New York Mets owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz. In the end, however, at its core, Bernie Madoff’s enterprise was no different from the one Charles Ponzi ran half a century earlier. When his scheme finally collapsed in 2008, Madoff had taken investments of almost $20 billion. He died on April 14, 2021, just 12 years into his sentence.
