Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff dies in prison at 82 - The Associated Press

A former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market, he attracted a devoted legion of investment clients — from Florida retirees to celebrities such as film director Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax.

But his investment advisory business was exposed in 2008 as a Ponzi scheme that wiped out people’s fortunes and ruined charities.

At the time of Madoff’s arrest, fake account statements were telling clients they had holdings worth $60 billion.

Madoff’s attorney in recent years, Brandon Sample, said in a statement that the financier had “lived with guilt and remorse for his crimes” up until his death.

But no man is,” Sample said.

Madoff’s brother, Peter, who helped run the business, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2012, despite claims he was in the dark about his brother’s misdeeds.

They worked hard,” said Thomas Morling, who worked closely with the Madoff brothers in the mid-1980s setting up and running computers that made their firm a trusted leader in off-floor trading.

“When Peter or Bernie said something that they were going to do, their word was their bond,” Morling said in a 2008 interview.

Madoff Investment Securities occupied three floors of a midtown Manhattan high-rise.

Madoff’s chief financial officer, Frank DiPascali, said in a guilty plea in 2009 that the statements detailing trades were “all fake.”.

His clients, many Jews like Madoff and Jewish charities, said they didn’t know.

Among them was Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who recalled meeting Madoff years earlier at a dinner where they talked about history, education and Jewish philosophy — not money.

Madoff “made a very good impression,” Wiesel said during a 2009 panel discussion on the scandal.

Like many of his clients, Madoff and his wife enjoyed a lavish lifestyle.

At Madoff’s sentencing in 2009, wrathful former clients stood to demand the maximum punishment.

Afterward, Ruth Madoff — often a target of victims’ scorn since her husband’s arrest — said she, too, had been misled by her high school sweetheart.

He recounted how just before the scheme was exposed, Madoff called him into his office