The Ponzi Scheme That Changed My Life

By MICHAEL KUBIN
NYT

IT was a “Remember where you were when ... ?” moment: on Dec. 11, 2008, I was standing under a palm tree in Santa Monica when my cellphone rang.

It was my brother-in-law, a Wall Street big shot who rarely called me. “Are you sitting down?” he asked. I wasn’t. And I didn’t. But I should have, because his next sentence made my knees wobble. “They arrested Bernie Madoff.”

He needn’t have said another word; I knew right away my whole investment was toast. Two weeks earlier I had doubled my stake, having thought of Mr. Madoff’s fund as a safe haven from a nose-diving stock market. Just that morning I had received my monthly statement showing a perky increase; I had even called to thank my Madoff contact.

Yet during all the years I had money with Mr. Madoff, I had a sense there was something odd about his fund. Its performance wasn’t stellar — it was just so suspiciously steady. I had joked with friends that “someday this will turn out to be a Ponzi scheme, but I’ll have my money out by then.” Someday turned out to be that Thursday, two years ago.

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