Bernie Madoff and his wife may have attempted suicide after he admitted stealing billions the largest Ponzi scheme in history, but now the disgraced financier says he feels happier in prison than he’s felt in 20 years.
Barbara Walters told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday that she interviewed Madoff for two hours at the prison in Butner, N.C., where he’s serving a 150-year sentence. No cameras were allowed in the prison.
According to Walters, Madoff says he has terrible remorse and horrible nightmares over his epic fraud, but feels “safer here (in prison) than outside. I have people to talk to, no decisions to make. I know I will die in prison. I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear. Now, I have no fear because I’m no longer in control.”
The comments come after wife Ruth revealed in a “60 Minutes” interview that the couple tried to kill themselves after the billion-dollar fraud scheme came to light.
“I don’t know whose idea it was, but we decided to kill ourselves because it was so horrendous what was happening,” Ruth Madoff tells Morley Safer. “We had terrible phone calls. Hate mail, just beyond anything and I said ‘I just can’t go on anymore.'”
“We took pills and woke up the next day….It was very impulsive and I am glad we woke up,” she said.
Walters also said he told her he understands why his one-time clients hate him, and that the average person thinks he “robbed widows and orphans.” But he also told her, “I made wealthy people wealthier.”
Madoff was arrested on Dec. 11, 2008, the morning after his sons notified authorities through an attorney that he had confessed to them that his investment business was a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. He admitted cheating thousands of investors. He pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
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3 Responses
“Madoff says he has terrible remorse”
What a Tzadik!
Remorse is a good thing, no? At least the Torah says so! It would be a wonderful thing if other Yidden caught up in well publicized white collar criminal cases showed a little bit of it themselves…and played just a wee bit less the part of the victim.
Yes he is crooked and yes he is a thief. But let us NOT forget that people were chasing him and throwing money at him. It is NOT as if he were holding a gun to anyone’s head. People of their own free will chose to risk their money gambling with him. They made a terrible choice and they lost. They bet on him, they trusted him, they counted on him and they put their faith in him and they lost. They were greedy and wanted to make millions off of him and they wanted to do it quickly without any effort on their part. They took their hard earned money at risked it.
He has remorse. Do they? Do they have remorse that they risked what they should not have risked and that they should NOT have been greedy but played it safer or are they just still blaming him and not themselves. Greed is a terrible thing. It got to him and it got to them and he is being punished big time. There is no excuse for his aveiros, but he has remorse and he is paying his dues to society. Everyone has blame here, those that perpetrated the fraud and those who trusted them.