Some of America’s wealthiest socialites are facing ruin after the arrest of a Wall Street big hitter accused of the largest investor swindle perpetrated by one man.
Shock and panic spread through the country clubs of Palm Beach and Long Island after Bernard Madoff, a trading powerbroker for more than four decades, allegedly confessed to a fraud that will cost his wealthy investors at least $50 billion — perhaps the largest swindle in Wall Street history.
Madoff, 70, a former Nasdaq stock chairman, was apparently turned in by his two sons and arrested on Thursday morning at his Manhattan apartment by the FBI. Andrew Calamari, a senior enforcement official at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, described the scheme as “a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions."
The FBI’s criminal complaint states that when two federal agents arrived at Madoff’s apartment, he told them: “There is no innocent explanation.” The agents say that he told them “he paid investors with money that wasn’t there," that he was “broke” and that he expected to go to jail.
Many of his investors came from the enormously wealthy enclaves of Palm Beach, Florida and Long Island, New York, where people had invested billions in Madoff’s firm for decades. He was a fixture on the Palm Beach social scene, and was a member of some of its most exclusive clubs, including the Palm Beach Country Club and Boca Rio Golf Club, where he drummed up much of his business. more
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