Ponzi

Madoff’s Desperate Last Gasp

Fraudster kept scamming friends right up to arrest.

Madoff was working his Ponzi scheme right up to the end. Even as the Feds were circling him and his family, Madoff hit up good friend and business partner Robert Jaffe and Carl Shapiro, the first person ever to invest in Madoff's business, the New York Post reports. He made desperate, last-minute pleas for more money to Walter Noel's hedge-fund firm Fairfield Greenwich, which lost half its assets to the fraudulent fund manager. “According to some reports, Nine West founder Jerome Fisher, who is said to have lost $150 million as a result of Madoff's alleged misdeeds, exchanged heated words with Jaffe at a black-tie birthday party Saturday,” reports the Post. One potential investor told The Post that Fairfield was telling investors on behalf of Madoff that they would be shut out of Madoff products in the future if they opted to withdraw from his existing funds or took a pass on participating in the new funds being set up.