Bernie Madoff died on
April 14, 2021, in prison.
He was the mastermind behind the
largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding investors out of nearly
$65 billion by using new investors' money to pay returns to earlier ones, creating the illusion of profitable investments.
In his early life, Madoff was born in
1938 in Queens, New York. He started a small investment firm in the
1960s, which eventually grew in reputation, even gaining respect on Wall Street, before it collapsed in
2008, revealing the massive fraud.