Madoff: The Final Word
by Richard Behar
View on GoodreadsVeteran financial journalist Richard Behar's biography of Bernie Madoff — the longest-running, largest-dollar Ponzi scheme in history — built on Madoff prison interviews before his 2021 death and on the historical investigative record.
Core ideas
- The scheme ran for at least 17 and possibly 40 years — long enough that Madoff and the SEC are jointly responsible; the SEC investigated him repeatedly and didn't see what was in front of them.
- The "split-strike conversion" investment strategy Madoff claimed to use was mathematically impossible to produce his claimed returns at his claimed risk levels, and serious analysts (Harry Markopolos most famously) called this out for years before the collapse.
- The family question — what Mark, Andrew, and Ruth Madoff knew when — is the book's hardest unresolved material; Behar handles it carefully without claiming closure.
Published2024
Pages384
ISBN9781476726892
ReadMar 2025
