'It was all based on a lie.' The true story behind Netflix's Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street.

Bernie Madoff learnt from a very young age how to motivate people with money. 

When people wouldn't play with him as a child, he'd offer them 25 cents, and they'd quickly change their mind.

As he got older, he became determined to make money and become successful. Which he did. But he also became a fraudster.

In 2009, at 71, Madoff plead guilty to a series of crimes which gave him the title of the 'mastermind behind the largest Ponzi scheme in history.' 

All up he defrauded about $64.8 billion, and his story is being unpacked with fresh eyes in 2023, in a new four-part Netflix documentary called, Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street.

Watch the trailer for Netflix Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street. Post continues below. 

This is his story.

Climbing the ranks: 'Happy to take the crumbs.'

Madoff was part of a tide of young hopeful money makers who flooded the market in the early 60s. 

America was bouncing back from World War II and The Great Depression and there was a strong appetite to make money and build the country back up. 

Madoff started as a trader working for a smaller firm and saw himself as not part of the 'Wall Street in-crowd.' 

"I was perfectly happy to take the crumbs," he told the Ponzi Supernova podcast in 2017.

Things changed when he formed the business Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, that went on to become one of the largest penny stock brokerage and wealth management firms.

He became incredibly well respected on Wall Street, serving as the chairman of the board of directors of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) for a time. He was also well known for his philanthropy to a number of charities and candidates of the Democrat Party. 

He and four other big players processed half of the New York Stock exchange's orders, and Madoff was making in the vicinity of $100 million a year by the late 80s.

The biggest Ponzi scheme in history.

Perhaps the most puzzling question in this story is: why? 

Madoff's business was successful. Really successful. He had no need to commit fraud. 

He ran his fraud arm through the wealth management portion of his business, attracting investors by promising them high returns on their investments. When they handed over their money, he'd deposit it into his own personal bank account and there it would sit. Trading statements back to clients showing their 'profits' were all a lie.

He says he started the deception in 1991, although some of his employees claim it went back as far as the 70s. 

It wasn't until the global financial crisis in 2008 when a number of investors wanted to cash in on $7 billion worth of their investments, that he came undone. 

On December 10, 2008, he confessed his wrongdoing to his sons Mark and Anthony who worked for the legitimate arm of his firm. 

According to documents filed by the FBI, he told his children 'all the family’s wealth and success were based on a lie.' 

They turned him into authorities the following day and he was charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, perjury and money laundering.

Image: Netflix.

All up, he took $64.8 billion in client assets, with one review suggesting his bank account may have made as much as $435 million in after-tax profit from those deposits. 

His more than 40,000 victims in 125 countries included director Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon, former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. 

Madoff pled guilty to 11 charges in total and was sentenced in 2009 to 150 years behind bars. 

He died in prison in 2021 at 82 from end-stage renal disease and other chronic medical conditions. 

The man behind the 'monster.' 

MADOFF: The Monster of Wall Street director Joe Berlinger described Madoff as a sociopath with no empathy and a "financial serial killer".

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Berlinger said, "He’s a sociopath who shares certain similarities with the serial killers I’ve profiled. A complete lack of empathy. If you take all the money of a widow, say you’re gonna take care of her, and take that money, that’s remarkably horrible. The other quality is this extreme narcissism that drove him."

As Berlinger points out, Madoff went so far as to blame some of his clients for being "greedy". 

"Most people who have told the Bernie Madoff story have told it in a way that has kind of mythologised Bernie as this evil genius who single-handedly duped Wall Street and duped the regulators. One of the ironies of the whole thing is that what he did wasn’t that complex. The fraud was so simplistic," he explained. 

During his sentencing, Madoff told the court, "I am responsible for a great deal of suffering and pain, I understand that. I live in a tormented state now, knowing of all the pain and suffering that I have created. I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren."

In phone interviews with The Washington Post towards the end of his life, Madoff expressed remorse for his crimes, telling the publication he had "made a terrible mistake". 

Madoff and his family lived a lavish life before his arrest.

He and wife Ruth met in high school when she was just 13, and married in 1959 before having two sons together. They owned luxury apartments in Manhattan, Palm Beach, Long Island and France, and were regulars on private jets and yachts.

Madoff's wife, Ruth, in 2009. Image: Getty/Yvonne Hemsey.

All of his family - Ruth, Mark, Anthony and his brother, Peter - worked for the Madoff company. 

Ruth was never charged in connection with his fraud, and didn't divorce him after news broke - although she did distance herself. 

In 2011, she told NBC she didn't miss her husband, remarking that "the villain of all this is behind bars".

Madoff's eldest son, Mark, died by suicide on the second anniversary of his father's arrest in 2010, leaving behind his wife Stephanie, and two young kids.

In a statement his lawyer said, "This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy," calling his client "an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo".

The New York Times reports Mark had been in an increasingly "fragile state of mind" as the anniversary approached, and was feeling anxiety about a number of lawsuits that had been filed against him and other members of his family in relation to his dad's scheme.

His widow, Stephanie, wrote in her biography of the day her father-in-law confessed to his crimes, "Bernie betrayed no emotion or remorse, calmly delivering his bombshell with the cool demeanour of an anchorman reading a wire report on the evening news." 

She holds him responsible for "killing my husband".

Meanwhile, Andrew Madoff died in 2014 from lymphoma. He was 48. He blamed the stress of the scandal for the return of the cancer he had fought off in 2003.

Madoff's younger brother, Peter Madoff, was sentenced to a decade behind bars in 2012 for falsifying the books and records of the investment advisory company founded by his brother. But he was not accused of knowingly participating in the Ponzi scheme and was released from prison in 2020. 

All six of Madoff's grandchildren have changed their last name to avoid being linked to their grandfather. 

Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street is streaming on Netflix now. 

Feature image: Netflix.