His own lawyer calls him a “deeply flawed individual” and I nominate that for the understatement of the recession.
Madoff’s fraud is an almost unbelievable scam, spanning a reported $170 billion dollars through his company, decades of time, abuse of untold friendships, and destruction of tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of peoples’ lives. This is not a scam limited to the primary vicitims, no, this scam has destroyed many families for generations to come because soo many invested everything they had.
But Madoff says he’s “sorry.” Due to the type of damages these cases do to families, retirees, and anyone touched by the scam, I am not sure “sorry” does it. I think spending the rest of his life confined in a spartan cell with plenty of time to think about all the horror he inflicted and to feel all the anguish and loss of his victims, but maybe that gives him too much credit because I don’t think he has any ability to respond as a human. How coudl he? He launched this scam decades ago and instead of unwinding it if not giving himself up, he only pushed harder to scam greater and greater amounts of money from more and more people.
Did he have no thoughts for what he was doing and no understanding that it would all wind up a massive train wreck?
Did he even try to invest the money? It sounds like the answer to that is “no.” Instead used the loot, because that’s what it was, to benefit himself and his family. He didn’t even try to invest the money – everything was a scam from his published returns (shame on the SEC, too) to his monthly account statements where he did not even take the time to make sure that his statements were even remotely accurate.
Madoff is less than human most would agree. But is it only that he is perfectly human?
Can a human be soo epically flawed and still function in society as he did for decades? I suppose so.
Maybe money is the root of all evil after all.