By Kevin Foley
It's difficult to feel sorry for Bernard Madoff, but the suicide of his eldest son must have been a wrenching blow to the imprisoned swindler.
As a father, I can empathize even with somebody as soulless as Madoff, who likely never dreamed his deprivations would ultimately cost him his first born.
Money is a powerful elixir for some. Like an alcoholic with a "strong weakness," as we Irish say, for Madoff one dollar was too many and millions were not enough.
Madoff had already earned more money than he could ever spend by the time he was in his fifties. He might have turned the family business over to his two boys and retired to a comfortable life of philanthropy and supporting causes in which he and his wife believed.
Instead, he embarked on a quest for more money.
Madoff did it by preying on the greed of his marks, telling them they'd see unimaginable returns if they just entrusted their life savings to his care. It even worked for awhile. Some did see those unimaginable - we now know improbable - returns. But when the banking crisis hit in 2008, it was game, set and match for Madoff and his scheme. You know the rest.
I have asked myself what Madoff was after. What could more money do for him? Art, homes, boats, cars? Or was the pursuit of money an end in itself? Was his net worth simply how Madoff measured himself as a man?
By the time most men reach Madoff's age (72) they often look at other ways to gauge their lives and their manhood. Have they succeeded as husbands and fathers? Have they played by the rules? Have they helped others?
Madoff's reckoning came December 11 when his 46-year-old son Mark, overcome by the disgrace of his old man's malfeasance and the prospect of a never ending trial by tabloid, decided he could take no more. He hanged himself in his apartment while Bernie Madoff's two-year-old grandson slept in a nearby room. The Shakespearean symmetry of the tragedy us unmistakable.
"My husband Mark took his own life, and regardless of what you feel about my father-in-law and his monstrous crimes, Mark's children are innocent victims and this is tragic for them," said Stephanie Morgan, Mark's widow.
Whether the same can be said about the innocence of Mark and his surviving 44-year-old brother Andrew remains to be seen. They both told investigators they had no knowledge of their father's back office scam.
Speculation that Mark took his own life because the feds were closing in on him appear unfounded.
Even as the Justice Department announced on December 17 that one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Ponzi scheme will forfeit $7.2 billion of the ill gotten gains to be distributed to his victims, Madoff himself sat alone in his cell at the federal penitentiary in Butner, N.C. grieving for his lost son.
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Kevin
Foley is president of KEF
Media Associates, an Atlanta-based producer and distributor
of sponsored news content to television and radio media. |