For many people, Bernie Madoff is a still a name that summons hate.
Madoff was the owner of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, a firm that was a family business. He ran it with his two sons, Mark and Andrew, and he gained a reputation for being a financial wizard, someone who never lost money and who always returned a profit for everyone who trusted him with their money. He was someone who took money from the famous and the ordinary, the rich and the middle class, and he promised everyone that he would do wonderful things with that cash. He lived in a fabulous home in New York City. He had business and political connections. His firm was, at one point, ranked as the sixth biggest on Wall Street but Madoff, himself, tried to keep a low-profile.
Of course, Madoff was a liar. While his brokerage firm actually did make money, the asset management part of his business was actually a massive Ponzi scheme. He took his clients’ money for himself and then kept everyone at bay by sending them fake documents that showed how well their investments were doing. As long as the economy remained strong, Madoff had nothing to worry about. People gave him their money, assumed it was safe, and then went away. But when the stock market crashed in 2008, Madoff realized that his panicked clients would be coming for their money and he wouldn’t be able to give it to them.
Overnight, Madoff’s life collapsed. He spent the rest of his days in prison, having been turned in by his own sons. One son committed suicide, the other would die of cancer with his last words apparently being that his father was dead to him. It was the biggest case of financial fraud in United State history and the majority of Madoff’s clients lost all of the money that they had given to him. It was subsequently learned that many people had spotted red flags when it came to Madoff and his business. (The fact that Madoff claimed to never lose money should have been a huge one.) But Madoff invested his money in politicians and he never faced a real investigation until it was too late. Madoff spend the rest of his days as a symbol of everything wrong with Wall Street.
Not surprisingly, quite a few movies were inspired by Bernie Madoff’s crimes, some of them featuring characters based on him and a few being about the case itself. Produced by HBO, 2017’s The Wizard of Lies stars Robert De Niro as Madoff, Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife, and Alessandro Nivola as his son, Mark. Directed by Barry Levinson, The Wizard of Lies follows Madoff as his Ponzi scheme collapses and it shows how the grand deception started. Robert De Niro plays Madoff as being essentially soulless, a sociopath who knew he would eventually get caught but who just couldn’t bring himself to stop stealing people’s money. Indeed, as played by De Niro, Madoff comes across as being one of the most joyless criminal masterminds in history. He’s fooled everyone but he can’t enjoy it. The impression that one gets is that Bernie Madoff was a pretty boring guy. Perhaps that’s why people were willing to trust him with their money. Someone that boring had to be trustworthy! Many people have claimed that there’s no way that Mark and Andrew Madoff couldn’t have know what their father was doing. In the film, one gets the feeling that Mark and Andrew knew something was going on but they decided to willfully blind themselves to what was happening around them. The film hints that was Madoff’s secret power. No one wanted to admit that his success was too good to be true.
The Wizard of Lies really doesn’t reveal anything new about the Madoff case. Madoff’s crimes were actually pretty simple. He wasn’t a criminal genius. He was just someone who understood the importance of telling people what they wanted to hear. Still, it’s a well-acted movie and, if you’re just looking for the facts of the case, The Wizard of Lies will give them to you.
Through the Shattered Lens 