Catastrophe

March 16, 2009
With his arrest on Dec. 11, 2008, the world first learned that Wall Street trader and former NASDAQ chairman Bernard Madoff was allegedly running the largest Ponzi scheme in history, a $50 billion scam constructed over decades. Husband and wife writing team the Strobers (Billy Graham, The Nixon Presidency) set out to discover "what sort of person could have coldly stolen from those who had entrusted him... in many instances, with their life savings?" Born in 1938, Madoff was an unmemorable student who, in his mid-twenties, got into investing with $5000. His rags-to-riches story helped him become one of the most trusted men in the financial world, delivering fantastic returns to clients like Kevin Bacon, Stephen Spielberg, the Fairfield Fund, a wide range of Jewish philanthropies, and countless other individual investors. Put together in less than three months, this early account depends largely on media and internet stories, supplemented by 25 interviews with those who knew Madoff. Though the Strobers raise many questions that can't yet be answered (how Madoff evaded regulators, whether he had confederates, etc.), their study of a charming alleged con man is compelling, can't-make-this-stuff-up reading.