03/13/09

After dropping my wife off at work this morning I switched on NPR just in time to catch the story about super swindler Bernard Madoff and where he spent last night. It wasn’t in his $7 million town house, it was in a 71/2- by 8 foot cinderblock cell in the Bighouse. His new home, the Metropolitan Correctional Center overlooks the city he looted. The station interviewed some of the victims of his Ponzi scheme. They were all glad that he was locked up after having his bail revoked, but they wanted to know where all of their money went, all $50 billion. Good question. According to NPR, Madoff didn’t have to tell them under the plea deal he made. Nice. So the government is going to have to spend money tracking it down.
The idea came to me that this is in essence a pirate story. Madoff is a modern day Captain Kidd who supposedly buried his treasure before heading to New York. No one has ever found Kidd’s treasure. For the sake of all of Madoff’s victims, I hope they find where he buried theirs.