How Much Did Madoff’s Sons Know?

Bernard Madoff’s giant Ponzi scheme came to an abrupt halt when his two sons shopped him to the feds. But how much did they know about their father’s spectacular crime? Victims are expressing their incredulity that Mark and Andrew Madoff, senior executives in their father’s business, could have remained ignorant for so many years. “There’s been a lot of speculation that it was a deal to keep the sons away from the criminal liability,” Brad Friedman, one of the lawyers representing defrauded Madoff investors, is reported by the New York Daily News in its hard copy edition. Meanwhile, the list of good and great names lured into Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme is getting longer. Another day and another rash of burned billionaires emerges: Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey lost a packet, as did the charitable trust of Avram and Carol Goldberg, former owners of the Stop & Shop supermarket chain. The Loeb family of New York were stung, along with Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, who lost “millions of dollars,” reports the New York Post. Yeshiva University is on the Madoff list, as is the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, which lost $145 million.