The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth by Brian Ross Page B

“Don’t forget that I live in Monte Carlo, and I know what these rich people are and want to look like when they want to show off. He was never a show-off.”
    Madoff’s most prized possession was the eighty-eight-foot yacht he bought for about $7.5 million in 2007, named The Bull . He docked it at Juan-les-Pins in Cap d’Antibes, near the Riviera villa. His New York decorator, Susan Blumenfeld, decorated it for the Madoffs, and Bernie commissioned an oil painting of the vessel. Now he could be delivered by sea to the Hôtel du Cap’s terrace like the other wealthy residents of the area.
    He now had a yacht on the Riviera, part ownership of two private jets, four multimillion-dollar homes, access to a bank account with billions of dollars in it, and no way out of the monumental crime scheme that had made it all possible.
    After his arrest, Bernie was asked how he had planned to end his Ponzi scheme, what was his exit strategy?
    “I just somehow hoped the world would end, that would have been a way out,” he told a visitor.
    “But Bernie,” the visitor said, “that would mean that Ruth and the boys and the grandkids would all be dead.”
    “Right,” said Bernie.
    Ruth seemed oblivious to any problem, even though they otherwise seemed so close.
    “As far as I know, there was nothing that they kept from each other since they were teenagers,” said Eleanor.
    Ruth had helped Bernie run the business when he started it. Her father steered him some of his first clients. Ruth’s role had diminished over the years, but she still had her own office one floor below Bernie’s. Former employees have told investigators that she was there at least once or twice a week.
    At one point, she went back to school to study nutrition and received a master’s degree from New York University. She is also listed as one of the two executive editors of a cookbook called Great Chefs of America Cook Kosher , though her precise role in the book’s creation is in dispute. Although Ruth and her co-executive editor appear in a photograph wearing aprons in a kitchen, the editor of the book, Karen MacNeil, told ABC News that she wrote and assembled the book and its recipes herself and never once met or talked with Ruth.
    Mostly, when Bernie went to the office, Ruth seemed to be a rich wife who had lunch, played golf, played bridge at the club, worked out at the Equinox gym, and enjoyed her wine and a smoke. She did not seem to have a care in the world other than making sure all the help was paid.
    “People like Madoff pick people in their lives who stay with them. Who are basically codependent,” said former FBI agent Garrett. The type of person who thinks, “‘I don’t really want to know what you’re up to, but I do want to benefit with the yachts and clothes and houses and antiques.’”
    In the weeks before her husband’s arrest, Ruth emptied her accounts of $15.5 million and helped Bernie prepare for the collapse. If she didn’t know it then, she would soon realize that she was married to a crook, and yet she remained close and loyal. Still in love, she said.
    “When your life becomes this sort of mega-materialism and there’s really no reality in your life,” said Garrett, “you can basically rationalize away all those things around, outside this world of wealth and materialism that you’re entitled to.”
    When reality hit, Ruth would be devastated.

The SEC
     
    “OBVIOUSLY, FIRST OF ALL, THIS CONVERSATION NEVER took place, Mark, okay?” Bernie Madoff warned the man on the other end of the line.
    “Yes, of course.”
    It was December 19, 2005, and for the first time in more than a decade, Madoff was facing the prospect that he might get caught by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has broad powers to investigate the financial industry.
    The SEC investigators were due to arrive in a few days, and Madoff was on the phone, coaching a witness on how to outsmart their questions.
    “I’m giving you, and,