The Life and Death of Mark Madoff: Madoff’s Eldest Son
The Madoff saga has yielded another unfortunate death -Madoff’s eldest son Mark Madoff. According to media reports Mark Madoff, 46, committed suicide by hanging himself with a black dog leash while his 2-year-old son slept nearby. His death occurred two years to the day after his father (Bernard Madoff) was arrested by the FBI.
Mark Madoff had sent at least two e-mails to his wife and one to his lawyer in the early morning, a police official said, before killing himself. In the e-mails to his wife, he asked her to take care of their son and said that he loved her, the official said. If you will remember Stephanie Madoff, Mark’s wife, petitioned a Manhattan court in February to change her and her children’s last names to Morgan to avoid harassment and threats (see previous post). Here is a video about Mark’s death:
Madoff and his first wife, Suzanne, divorced in 2000.He has two other children from a previous marriage, ages 18 and 16. Mark Madoff graduated from the University of Michigan. He was a licensed broker with his father’s firm since 1987.
Mark’s death is the fourth major death surrounding the Madoff scandal and the second purported suicide. The first was investor’s Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet’s suicide and the second being the death of Jeffry Picower (see previous post regarding Picower) and the third was Stanley Chais a Beverly Hills, California investment advisor who operated feeder funds which allocated capital to Madoff funds (see previous post regarding Chais).
In recent weeks, federal investigators had charged a number of Bernard Madoff associates in indictments. The latest under indictment was key operative Annette Bongiorno, who was charged last month with fabricating documents and securities fraud in connection with the Ponzi scheme.
Madoff’s other son Andy, despite attempts to continue to keep a low profile, was featured in several media articles relating to a company he started with his girlfriend Catherine Hooper (who reportedly has a tattoo of the Madoff name) called Black Umbrella which provides disaster recovery planning for families. Andy and the now deceased Mark reportedly also were avid fisherman which was coincidentally a hobby equally shared by Madoff’s former Chief Financial Officer Frank DiPascali (see previous post). Here’s is a video with Mark Madoff showing off Abel Reels (a company he was the leader of an investment group which bought them):
Agents investigating the scheme recently had focused more attention on Mark Madoff, one investigator said. “He was next up to the tee,” said the investigator, who didn’t want to be named because of the pending probe, referring to the shift of attention to Mark Madoff. Mark Madoff wasn’t viewed as a major insider with vast knowledge of his father’s fraud but he is believed to have had some awareness of the fraudulent nature of the operation, the investigator said.
“This is a tragic development, and my sympathy goes out to Mark Madoff’s family,” Irving Picard the Madoff trustee said in a statement yesterday.
Jeff Wilpon, chief operating officer of the New York Mets, who went to Roslyn High School with Madoff in the 1980s, said, “It is shocking, it is sad, it is tragic.” Mr. Wilpon, who said in December 2008 that Mark Madoff had been a friend of his for 30 years, has been sued along with other members of his family by Picard in one of hundreds of lawsuits the trustee has filed to get back profits from Madoff investors.
Ira Sorkin, Bernard Madoff’s lawyer, said he was unable to get in touch with his client, who is serving a 150-year sentence at federal prison in North Carolina. Sorkin did say, “I’m very sure he has been informed. This is a great tragedy on many, many levels.”
A lawyer for Madoff’s mother said, “Ruth is heartbroken.” Mark Madoff had not spoken to his parents since his father’s arrest, on the 
advice of his lawyer.
There have been no reported statements made by Peter Madoff (Bernard’s brother and Mark’s uncle) or Peter’s daughter (Bernard Madoff’s niece and Mark and Andy’s cousin Shana Madoff). Both Peter and Shana were also named in a suit recently filed by Irving Picard.
Perhaps this fictional account of Mark and Andy teaming up with their own lawyers and distancing themselves from Bernard Madoff around the holidays puts Mark’s death this in perspective:
Money Never Sleeps… Does Hedge Fund Operational Due Diligence?
We all knew this day would come. Gordon Gecko, the fictional wolf of Wall Street portrayed by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film Wall Street is returning in a new soon to be released movie sequel called Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Here is the trailer:
Mr. Gecko is most famous for the line, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.“ Here the clip where Mr. Gecko says the famous line at a stockholder’s meeting:
This new movie revisits Mr. Gecko 23 years later, after he is released for stock manipulation and other securities crimes.
In this film, Mr. Gecko tries to warn the world of the 2008 financial crisis (before it happens). Along the way he crosses paths with a hedge fund’s prop trader, Jacob, (played by Shia LeBouf). In a plot twist Jacob suspects, who else but the hedge fund manager for the death of his mentor….
In the pre-Madoff environment, and particularly in the 1980′s when the first Wall St. film takes place, business and operational shenanigans, may have foolishly been subject to lesser degrees of due diligence – which is perhaps why they either went undetected or grew out of control (i.e. – Ivan Boesky)
All this made me think in the post-Madoff environment if the Gordon Gecko’s of the world would still stand up to modern due diligence techniques? ….
Perhaps maybe this theatrical shareholder’s speech sums it up best:
Madoff Prison Pics (Sort of)…. And Ezra Merkin’s Fellons
While no pictures have been released of Madoff (aka prisoner No. 61727-054) in prison here is a photo/illustration of what New York magazine thinks it would look like:
In their article on Madoff’s prison life, New York magazine also provides insight into how other inmates view Bernie with this sketch by fellow inmate (and convicted bank robber K.C. White):
The article goes on to quote Madoff in prison as follows:
“F— my victims,” he [Madoff] said, loud enough for other inmates to hear. “I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years.”
Oh by the way, here is a video that sort of flew under the radar, J. Ezra Merkin allegedly employed a convicted felon named Victor Teicher who reportedly advised Merkin from jail in 1994 not to invest with Madoff. These allegations came out of New York University’s lawsuit against him:
