IT’S easy to express in dollars what I lost to Bernard Madoff.
I invested $2 million — my life’s savings — at the end of 2001 with him, and now it’s all gone.
That amount includes the $300,000 I had redeemed to pay my income taxes through the years on the phantom profits I earned through his phony investments.
But I also have lost a big part of me. I think part of me died that day I learned of the fraud, along with so many hopes and dreams for the future.
AMBROSINO: OUR RETIREMENT IS DYING IN THE DESERT
BEHAR: SELL YOUR PHONY APOLOGY TO SOMEONE WHO BUYS IT
URBAN: WE’RE BROKE – NOT BROKEN
The true way to measure my loss is to look at what the fraud and the government’s negligence in failing to stop him have done to my life.
I may lose my house in Rockland County.
My dream of giving my 18-month-old adopted son a better childhood than I had was stolen from me. And my plans to adopt another child, so that my son wouldn’t be an only child, as I was, have gone up in smoke. The stress may be worsening my Parkinson’s disease.
And I no longer have the comfort and security of knowing I had money to fall back on. I found it devastating when that was taken away from me in just a second.
I have lost faith in a government that I once believed in.
It blows my mind to think that the Securities and Exchange Commission could have stopped Madoff’s fraud years ago, when the agency was explicitly warned, before I even contemplated putting my money in. I find it hard to believe.
I want Madoff to suffer, along with anyone who helped him. But what I really want more than anything, though, is for the SEC to acknowledge its negligence and its failure to protect me and the other victims.
And I want the SEC to help us to get our lives back financially.
I think the sentence Madoff received yesterday was appropriate. But whether he got 12 years or 150 years, either way it doesn’t help me pay my bills.
The sentence is only a small part of this story. The most important thing is to get restitution to his victims, but I am glad that he never will see freedom again.
I was disappointed that he appeared in court wearing what is no doubt a $1,000 suit. I would have gotten a little pleasure seeing him in an orange jailhouse jumpsuit.