Mark Madoff Suicide: Bernie Madoff's Son Found Hanged In NYC Apartment
The son of jailed financier Beie Madoff was found dead in New York today.
Mark Madoff, 44, was found hanging by a dog leash in his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary of his father's arrest.
A family member notified police around 7.30 this moing.
Mark and his brother, Andrew, were under investigation but hadn't faced any criminal charges in the massive Ponzi scheme that led to their father's jailing.
'He was found hanged in his apartment. It was an apparent suicide,' a police spokesman Paul Browne said.
Beie Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence after he was found guilty in June 2009 of swindling more than £45bn in the elaborate fraud.
Both Mark and Andrew had worked in senior positions for their father's securities firm since their twenties and supervised Madoff's stock-trading desks.
But it was a side of the firm not directly involved in the Ponzi scheme.
His 67-year-old wife lives in Florida, where she carries out 'Meals on Wheels' charity work.
A year ago, the court-appointed trustee trying to unravel Madoff's financial affairs sued several relatives, including Peter - Beard's brother, who played a prominent role in the family's company - Mark and Andrew, accusing them of failing to detect the fraud while living lavish lifestyles financed with the family's ill-gotten fortune.
The lawsuit accused Mark Madoff of using $66m he received improperly to buy luxury homes in New York City, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
In February, Mark Madoff's wife petitioned a court to change her last name and the last names of her children, saying her family had received threats and was humiliated by the scandal.
On 11 December 2008, Madoff summoned his sons to his New York penthouse flat to tell them his investment business was 'one big lie'.
They were devastated. Andrew lay crying on the floor of the kitchen and Mark reacted in fury.
Friends told Vanity Fair magazine that Andrew condemned his father’s ‘biblical’ betrayal. His wife, Deborah, reportedly filed for divorce on the day of her father-in-law’s arrest.
Investigation: A medical examiner arrives at the the apartment building where Madoff lived today
Police officers at the scene of the death today. Earlier this year, Mark's wife petitioned a court to change her last name and that of her children, saying her family had received threats and was humiliated by the scandal
One former Madoff employee, named only as Deborah, said the sons ‘wouldn’t have been able to do what Beie did: they just didn’t have the evilness in them.’
But she added: ‘If I were to say that Mark and Andy are innocent, I’d get people looking at me like I’m absolutely nuts.’
Mark was said to be obsessed by the scandal, poring endlessly over newspaper and Inteet reports.
Twenty-four hours after his father told him what he had done, Mark was said to have missed the office Christmas party and gone home to lay on his bed, fully clothed, without moving for four hours.
After the initial furore died down, he tried unsuccessfully to get a job in trading before starting his own company making applications for iPads.
But the scandal would not go away. Mark recently had been using an email address that does not include his first or last name.
‘That was meaningful for him in terms of getting to the next level,’ she said.
She added that Andrew's priority was to make his daughters understand that ‘just because their grandfather tued out to be one of the worst criminals ever didn't mean they’re bad people.’
He told friends when his father was jailed that he couldn’t find it in his heart to take pity him.
The magazine claimed the sons cold-shouldered their mother because they believed her tendency to side with her husband, no matter what, enabled his pyramid scheme fraud to succeed for so long.
Madoff wrote to his sons from jail and sent them a gift of a vintage Paul Neman Rolex Daytona, a Piaget and a Cartier Tank watch.
He wrote:‘Dear Mark and Andy, If you can bear to keep these watches, they are given with my love. If not, give them to someone who might. Love, Dad.’
A trader who was friends with the family said Madoff considered his sons ‘soft’ because he had worked to make his fortune while they had been given everything on a plate.
‘Mark and Andy had never gone against him. They were always trying to please him, and never could,’ he told Vanity Fair.
Mark's death is not the first following the fraud scandal. A billionaire associate of Madoff was found dead at his Florida mansion.
Jeffry Picower was discovered at the bottom of his swimming pool in Palm Beach - a seaside playground for America's rich and famous.
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