L’Oreal cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the world’s richest woman, lost part of her $22.9 billion fortune by investing with Bernard Madoff, Bloomberg reports. Anonymous tipsters claim Bettencourt was the first investor in Access International Advisors, whose co-founder, Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, was found dead in his office on Monday night. Police say his death is likely due to suicide. Bettencourt is another name in a long list of high-profile individuals, including Spanish billionaire Alicia Koplowitz, director Steven Spielberg and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who have lost money in Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme. In 2008, Bettencourt was 17th on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people. She inherited L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics maker, in 1957.
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