Madoff with the Money Read Online Free PDF Page A

But looking back several months later, he compares those hours of fun to the hours before another immense and historic tragedy.
    â€œIt was like dancing on the foredeck of the Titanic before it hit the iceberg. For us, it hit the iceberg the next day.”

    Around 8:30 A.M. on Thursday, December 11, Theodore Cacioppi, an FBI agent, along with a partner, arrived at the chic and exclusive prewar cooperative apartment building at 133 East 64th Street, a short stroll from Central Park, showed his identification to the doorman, walked through the conservative lobby with its leather chairs and an orchid in a vase—the orchid was Ruth’s idea (the Madoff offices always had fresh orchids on display)—and took the elevator up to the two-level penthouse, the Madoffs’ 4,000-square-foot, $7 million aerie filled with great art and priceless antiques.
    With just two apartments on each floor—it was that elegant a building—the feds easily found the Madoffs’ door. More visible tenants inhabited the co-op, such as Today show co-host Matt Lauer, who would later complain about his loss of privacy in having to weave his way through the small army of reporters staking out the Madoffs in order to get to his apartment.
    Cacioppi, who had been with the Bureau for six and a half years and had been “personally involved” in looking into allegations against Bernie, knocked on the door, but the doorman had already telephoned up, alerting the Madoffs to their early-morning visitors. Bernie, wearing a pale blue bathrobe and slippers, had told him they were expected.
    At the moment the FBI agents walked into the foyer of the Madoff apartment they already knew that Bernie had admitted his crimes to several close associates, according to Agent Capiocci’s sworn complaint and deposition that was filed with the U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of New York, Thomas F. Eaton, on the day Bernie was booked for fraud. The close associates, listed as three “senior employees,” were known to be his sons and his brother. Peter was told first, and then Mark and Andy—purportedly on the day of the Christmas party at which they were no-shows. Their attorney, Flumenbaum, of the prestigious Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison firm, asserted that the brothers had no knowledge of their father’s criminal activity before he informed them the day of the party.
    Beginning in early December, according to Capiocci, Bernie had revealed that he had been running a “separate” investment advisory business for clients that was not part of the Madoff firm’s trading and market-making activities, and that he had kept the financial statements for that operation “under lock and key.” Bernie, who appeared “to have been under great stress,” disclosed “he was struggling to obtain the liquidity necessary to meet requests for approximately $7 billion in redemptions.” Bernie said he “wasn’t sure he would be able to hold it together.”
    At a subsequent meeting at his apartment he informed his associates—his sons—that his investment advisory business was “a fraud,” that he was “finished,” that he had “absolutely nothing,” that “it’s all just one big lie,” and that he was running “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme,” and “had for years been paying returns to certain investors out of the principal received from other, different investors,” according to the FBI agent’s report.
    Bernie stated that “the business was insolvent, and that it had been for years,” and he estimated that “the losses from this fraud to be at least approximately $50 billion.” Bernie claimed he had $200 million to $300 million left and he “planned to use that money to make payments to certain selected employees, family, and friends.”
    He also stated he was going to give himself up to