A FINANCIAL SERIAL KILLER National Gallery of Art collection, though it’s not displayed). It would be comforting, in a way, if there
Of course, Madoff wasn’t wanting. He traveled extensively, schmoozed with the rich and famous, and lived in an $8 million penthouse in the swanky Upper East Side 60s of New York’s Manhattan. In 1986, a finance magazine listed Madoff as one of the 100 best-paid Wall Streeters, estimating his compensation that year at $6 million (that’s equivalent to nearly $15 million today). But he could have been far wealthier, by many orders of magnitude... meaning plain-vanilla greed wasn’t his motivation. So, why? It’s a question that still puzzles Erin. She thinks that it’s mostly simply because he could. “He enjoyed getting one over on people,” Erin told me. “And he was getting away with it.” In Madoff’s office was a telling sign: His prized piece of artwork was a replica of a 1976 four-foot sculpture of a screw (pictured left below), called “Soft Screw,” by Swedish- born sculptor Claes Oldenburg (it’s in the
were some evidence that Madoff had a chip – in this case it would be an entire tree trunk, considering the extent of his “revenge” – on his shoulder. The armchair psychologist could get some satisfaction – and reassurance – if Madoff had grown up poor, or bullied, or from a broken home. Then, there would be something to point to... some underlying cause, no matter how tenuous, that would at least seem to partly explain Madoff’s ruthlessness and his inhumanity. But there isn’t... And it’s more disturbing that Madoff seems to have been motivated by just... well, nothing in particular. Hail the whistleblower. Accountant Harry Markopolos (pictured center below), who worked for a rival hedge fund, tried to understand how Madoff could post such strong returns so consistently. When
Claes Oldenburg’s Soft Screw sculpture, in Madoff’s office. Photo: Government Exhibit
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May 2021
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