Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff (pronounced /ˈmeɪdɒf/; born April 29, 1938) is a convicted felon and former Wall Street financier. Madoff, who served as a non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange, pled guilty to an 11-count criminal complaint, admitting to defrauding thousands of investors of billions of dollars and was convicted of operating a Ponzi scheme that has been called the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person. Federal prosecutors estimated client losses, which included fabricated gains, of almost $65 billion. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum allowed. As there is no parole in the federal correctional system, it was tantamount to a life sentence.
Madoff founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960, and was its chairman until his arrest on December 11, 2008. The firm was one of the top market maker businesses on Wall Street, which bypassed "specialist" firms, by directly executing orders over the counter from retail brokers.
He confessed to his sons on December 10, 2008, that the asset management arm of his firm was a giant Ponzi scheme—as he put it, "one big lie." They then passed this information to authorities. The following day, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Madoff and charged him with one count of securities fraud. The SEC had previously conducted several investigations into Madoff's business practices since 1999, which critics contend were incompetently handled.
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