No single year holds a monopoly on bad behavior among the super-rich. The grand finale of 2008 came from Bernard Madoff, the disgraced New York money manager who allegedly had been scamming investors out of an estimated $50 billion during the past decade. As the cliche goes, Madoff was not alone. When the tide went out on Wall Street, plenty of other rotten fish were left behind. From a hedge fund manager who faked his suicide to a tyrant’s wife who splurges on Ferragamos while her people starve, here’s our look at the worst excesses of the moneyed elite.
