Bernie Madoff: How he pulled it off

when it comes to the late ponzi schemer bernie madoff you could truly write a book jim axelrod has been talking to the author who did that's him for the 12 and a half years between his arrest and his death bernie madoff barely said a word to reporters this is a handwritten letter that bernie sent me or so we thought it turns out he was engaged in extensive correspondence with a journalist named jim campbell 400 pages worth handwritten letters the vast bulk of 400 pages is emails i have a chunk they're single spaced they're long they're full of compulsion to explain very nixonian in the need to rationalize and justify his behavior campbell is out with a book madoff talks which takes us inside the mind of the man who perpetrated the biggest fraud in american financial history did he ever express remorse yes and it would happen this way my lawyers tell me i have to express from morris jim i said here's a victim that you decimated how do you feel about that and i said i i really tremendous amount of remorse please tell her that i say that why didn't he reach out to her himself and say i'm sorry you couldn't do that really his grotesque ego permitted only one sentence of apology to his son andrew but allowed him to write letter after letter to a stranger to try to manage his legacy you realize that he's writing a guy that he's never met six seven page single space letters and he sent a letter to andy and his fiancee partner one sentence i'm so sorry dad not even love i'm so sorry dad that's chilling it illuminates a narcissist that is compelled to rationalize what he happened sometimes he would go jim you know nobody knows why madoff did this i said bernie you're made off prison officials refused campbell's request for a face-to-face visit with madoff but he took madoff's wife ruth to lunch many times starting in 2011. was ruth madoff complicit my assessment is she was not complicit and she did not know about it i asked her what did you say after bernie told you guys what is a ponzi scheme and you think that's on the level you think ruth madoff really didn't know what a ponzi scheme was i don't believe that she really understood what was going on though it removes an element of sinister that bernie has attached to him and just makes ruth tragic it does and also it's again emanating from madoff's ego he could never have admitted to his wife and family that he was running this thing as a criminal enterprise bernie madoff outlived both his sons mark died by suicide on the second anniversary of madoff's arrest andrew died of cancer in 2014. you know andrew would say to me he killed mark quickly he's killing me slowly andrew and his brother had worked for their father in a legitimate billion dollar market-making business madoff kept separate from the ponzi scheme after madoff confessed to his sons they turned him in andrew never spoke a word to him again did he have any capacity for introspection no not much i don't think he had introspection because he's keeping this thing running in his brain every day complete criminal enterprise at the same time he's keeping the legitimate business um going how could a guy do that if he's looked inside himself for two minutes it's the work of a psychopath it's a work of a financial psychopath uh yes this is a statement of bernie's firm and went to his investors each month campbell showed us one of the principal tools of the fraud morgan stanley pepsico american express pfizer bank of america procter gamble this particular client thought that madoff was investing his or her money in these companies yes was he no it's completely fake he had complete phony records run off of an old archaic ibm as400 and every trade was there faked but that was just for the regulators and for show campbell says plenty of blame extends well beyond madoff how could the regulators not uncover that it's inexcusable it's gross negligence it's incompetence but at the heart of his story is a criminal mastermind who kept spinning to the end he thought that i would set the record straight you'll see that the first letter says that you know you can help clear up all the misperceptions that are out there if that was his calculus then bernie madoff's final investment in jim campbell ended up like all the others worthless i say it's not too far of a stretch to say he was a monster he was a product as he told me of the corrupt nature of wall street so it was somebody else's fault yes the blame was always shifted to somebody else

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 210,086

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, bernie madoff, investors, ponzi scheme, died, prison, journalist, author, jim campbell, madoff talks, financial, fraud, wall street, history

Id: GHKmmXjCrOA

Length: 5min 13sec (313 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021