Saturday, December 11, 2010

Maybe he thought nobody would notice.

Today’s big news story — right after the blizzard heading for Chicago — is the suicide of Mark Madoff, eldest son of Bernie Madoff, that sleazebag financier who’s currently serving 150 years for running the largest Ponzi scheme in Wall Street’s history. The younger Madoff apparently was found hanging today from a ceiling pipe in his multi-million dollar New York City loft condo.

Although he loved to insist that he had no knowledge of his father’s financial crimes, Mark always remained under close scrutiny and was named in multiple lawsuits by swindled investors attempting to retrieve ill-gotten gains. In particular, Mark was hounded by investigators about using $66 million from Madoff Securities to purchase luxury homes in New York City, Nantucket and Connecticut. This now-deceased Einstein probably figured nobody would ever suspect him of spending money that wasn’t actually his because dad let him act as the “whistle blower” when the Ponzi scheme story was reported to authorities two years ago.

I think today’s suicide pretty much tells the FBI what they wanted to know. Oy, what a family.

In case you don’t have anything too exciting planned for tomorrow morning please be sure to watch two terrific movies on TCM. “The Shop Around the Corner” (Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart) is on at 9:15 a.m. and “The Bishop’s Wife” (Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young) is on at 11 (both times are Central). These are two of my all-time favorite holiday movies. Thank you for reading this.

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