The Bernard Madoff Investment Scam

Bonnie Kirchner, CFP®, MST

As I have speculated in regard to my ex-husband, Bradford Chester Bleidt, and the “snowball” effect in relation to his crimes, it may be that Bernard Madoff fell down the slippery slope in a much larger fashion. In a June 2009 article in Vanity Fair, he is reported as saying to his secretary, Eleanor Squillari, “Well, you know what happens is, it starts out with you taking a little bit, maybe a few hundred, a few thousand. You get comfortable with that, and before you know it, it snowballs into something big.”¹ This was a comment he made when she asked him what he thought about a colleague’s secretary going to prison for embezzling millions of dollars years before giving his own confession. ...