By Allan Lengel
After pulling off an impressive Ponzi scam for many years, FBI agents finally came knocking on Bernie Madoff’s penthouse door on New York’s Upper East Side on Dec. 11, 2008. And when they did, he wasn’t surprised, telling them he’d been expecting them, Market Watch reports, citing newly released FBI files.
Madoff told the agents he’d been planning to turn himself in and that he couldn’t go on because he was broke and couldn’t carry out the scheme any longer.
Madoff told his sons Mark and Andrew about the scam he’d been pulling off the day before his arrest, Market Watch reports. They contacted the FBI.
Madoff, who was serving a 150 year sentence, died in federal prison in April 2021 at the age of 82 from kidney failure. He had served 11 years.
In 2009, when he was sentenced, he said:
“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.”
