Ruth Madoff reckons she’s embarrassed, ashamed, confused, and betrayed by her husband’s fraud. But is she sorry?
Not if you read between the lines of her public statement in the aftermath of the (excessive?) 150-year sentence handed to her disgraced Ponzi fraudster Bernard Madoff in a New York court on Monday.
Of the convicted crook with whom she shared a bed for 50 years she says, “the man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man I’ve known all these years”.
Hello? Who was he then? Wasn’t she paying attention the past few years? How could you miss the elephant in the corner – i.e. the piles of money?
The thing that strikes me about Mrs Madoff statement – which comes after she has been roundly criticised for saying nothing and therefore appearing indifferent and unsympathetic to her husband’s victims – is that it hits all the right emotional buttons yet still seems hollow, somehow. Almost as if there is an emotional disconnect. Like she knows she has to say she’s shocked, and it’s a terrible nightmare and enormous fraud and her financier husband has caused wrenching pain and she’s a victim and she, too, can’t believe he did it. No, Really!
But I’m thinking Mrs M sounds most shocked for herself because “my life with the man I have known for over 50 years is over.” The ritz. The glamour. The privilege. Well almost over.
Let’s not forget that Mrs Madoff has been afforded the court-ordered privilege on retaining US$2.5 million of the family’s $171 billion fortune – $80 million of which she laid claim to – while hundreds of victims of her crooked husband have been entirely wiped out. It must be hard to survive on such a paltry amount.
Me? I’m not buying Mrs Madoff’s spin.
Two words: crocodile tears.
For the entire statement, go here:
