Wife Withdrew Millions Before Madoff’s Arrest

By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
NYT

The day before the disgraced financier Bernard L. Madoff was arrested, his wife, Ruth, withdrew $10 million from an account at a brokerage firm with close ties to her husband, according to records released on Wednesday by state securities regulators in Boston.

That day, Dec. 10, was the same day that federal prosecutors say Mr. Madoff confessed to his sons in a midday conversation that his apparently thriving investment advisory business was a Ponzi scheme with losses as high as $50 billion. The sons reported the conversation to the prosecutors late in the afternoon, and Mr. Madoff was arrested the next morning.

Mrs. Madoff also shows up in the records of Cohmad Securities, the firm tied to her husband, with a withdrawal of $5.5 million on Nov. 25, less than three weeks before the arrest.

The internal documents showing these transactions were among those released in Boston as part of an investigation of Cohmad Securities by William F. Galvin, the top securities regulator for Massachusetts, where Cohmad had an active Boston office. Cohmad Securities was founded in 1985 by Mr. Madoff and a close associate, Maurice J. Cohn.

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