Bernie Madoff Had Help From His Wife
What did Ruth Madoff know, and when did she know it? The wife of the man accused of a $50 billion Ponzi scheme reportedly ran the books for his crooked money-management business.
That's what a person "close to the case" — we're guessing an investigator who didn't want to be named — told Lucinda Franks of the Daily Beast. Ruth Madoff reportedly oversaw an account which commingled funds from Madoff's investment-advisory and stock-trading operations, as well as his personal account. She also reports that a stash of as many as 20 million documents from Bernie Madoff's stock-trading company was found in Queens.
To date, the story Madoff has been telling is that he acted alone, without the knowledge of any family members, including his wife. His company also employed his brother, two sons, and a niece. He claims to have kept the money-management operations completely separate, housed on a different floor than the rest of his business. But if Ruth Madoff ran a commingled account, could she really have been unaware of the scam? And if the funds were commingled, could the other Madoff family members who worked at the firm be implicated?
