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Andrew Madoff dead: Son of convicted Ponzi scheme fraudster loses battle with cancer

'Andrew Madoff (left) has lost his courageous battle against mantle cell lymphoma,' lawyer Martin Flumenbaum said in a statement

Mark McSherry
Thursday 04 September 2014 03:51 EDT
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Andrew Madoff with Eleanor Squillari at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013
Andrew Madoff with Eleanor Squillari at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013

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Andrew Madoff, the 48-year-old son of convicted Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernard Madoff, died yesterday after a long fight against cancer.

The fraudster’s other son Mark committed suicide in 2010 on the second anniversary of his father's arrest.

Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to running a gigantic Ponzi scheme that was estimated to have cost investors at least $17 billion.

“Andrew Madoff has lost his courageous battle against mantle cell lymphoma,” lawyer Martin Flumenbaum said in a statement.

Madoff’s sons always denied knowing about their father’s fraudulent scheme and had not faced criminal charges related to the Ponzi operation.

The brothers worked in a trading department at Bernard Madoff's investment company in Manhattan, operating on a different floor from where their father operated his gigantic Ponzi scheme.

The sons turned their father in to law enforcement authorities in December 2008.

However, Irving Picard, the trustee in charge of retrieving cash for Madoff's victims, had filed civil legal claims against Andrew Madoff and the estate of Mark Madoff, alleging that the brothers had helped the Ponzi scheme and had made millions of dollars in doing so.

Lawyers for the brothers had denied the allegations.

According to Bloomberg, Picard had recovered about $9.8 billion as of July to partially reimburse Madoff’s clients who lost money.

Speaking about his father in a 60 Minutes interview in 2011, Andrew Madoff said: “What he did was unforgivable. He destroyed so many lives.

“So many thousands of people who trusted him with their life’s savings, with their retirement money - money that was to go to their children, and the money that they lived off… to see those people have their lives turned upside down, have to sell their homes and take their children out of school and have their dreams destroyed by this crime - it’s unforgivable.”

Andrew Madoff had revealed last year that his mantle cell lymphoma, for which he was treated in 2003, had recurred.

He told People magazine: “One way to think of this is the scandal and everything that happened killed my brother very quickly - and it's killing me slowly.”

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