Madoff founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960
Bernard Madoff was born on April 29, 1938, in Queens, New York. He used $5,000 earned from a lifeguarding job to found his investment company. Madoff's firm offered reliable returns and his client list included celebrities like Steven Spielberg. Madoff's son reported him for securities fraud and Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts. In 2009, the 71-year-old was sentenced to 150 years in prison.
Bernard Lawrence Madoff was born on April 29, 1938, in Queens, New York, to parents Ralph and Sylvia Madoff. Ralph, the child of Polish immigrants, worked for many years as a plumber. His wife, Sylvia, was a housewife and the daughter of Romanian and Austrian immigrants. Ralph and Sylvia married in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. After struggling financially for many years, in the early 1950s, they became involved in finance.
Records of his Madoff's financial dealings show they were less than successful with the trade. His mother registered as a broker-dealer in the 1960s, listing the Madoffs' home address in Queens as the office for a company called Gibraltar Securities. The SEC forced the closure of the business for failing to report their financial condition. The couple's house also had a more than $13,000 tax lien which went unpaid from 1956 until 1965. Many suggest that the company and the loans were all a front for Ralph's backhanded dealings.
But the young Madoff showed no interest in finance during this time; he was far more focused on girlfriend Ruth Alpern, who he met in junior high. The couple