Bernie Madoff - Anita

• Bernie Madoff was born on April 29, 1938, in the Queens, New York City, New York. His parents were Ralph and Slyvia Madoff. While Ralph was the child of Polish immigrants who had migrated to America, pursuing a plumbing business which Bernie's father had carried on. Slyvia was simply a housewife, the daughter of a mixture of Austrian and Romanian immigrants. The two European  immigrants were married in the year of 1932, at the very height of the famous Great Depression. As they seemed to struggle with money matters and the economy for a prolonged amount of time, they eventually became involved in finance when the time was right. Later on in his life, Bernie would be influenced by this and the stock market.
• The Madoff began a broker-dealer business in Bernie's early life, which became less than successful. While his parents had long wished that they could produce more money after the Great Depression, they eventually received a tax lien of over $13,000 on their home that actually went unpaid from 1956 to 1965. These failures probably led Bernie to lose interest in his parents' occupation. His focus and time was dedicated more towards his girlfriend, Ruth Alpert, whom he had met at Far Rockaway High School, along with his passion for his swim team. When he was not attending swim meets or occupying himself any other way, his swim coach would hire him to lifeguard at Silver Point Beach Club in Atlantic City in his teens.
• Bernie attended the University Of Alabama, and, married his high school sweetheart, attending nearby Queens College. They settled together and eventually had two children, Mark and Andrew Madoff. While both have sadly passed, they were great people who suffered. Together Bernie did not look into beginning a company associated with the stock market until he planned the tomake investments for personal, selfish benefits. In 1960, Bernie used $5,000 from his lifeguard savings to begin installing sprinkler systems so that he could eventually make enough money to create his dream investment business, which was now his passion and focus. His business began successfully, even having clients such as Steven Spielberg. 
• In December of 2008, Bernie was discovered, along with the elaborate Ponzi-Scheme he had been running while his multi-million dollar company seemed to be oddly prospering, along with the excuses he made for where his investors' money went and why all his false records claimed that every time an investor desired to withdraw money or check th statuses of their stocks, the outcome was always incredibly high. Even after Bernie pleaded for being accused of eleven felonies and imprisoned for 150 years, the government attempted to recover money for the investors who had not been returned theirs from the false company. While they were able to recover a large amount, many investors lost vital life savings that were curtails to them.
• Bernie Madoff's family, along with himself, suffered greatly after his arrest and imprisonement, especially because his family did not even have knowledge that he was running this false business until he admitted to them after he was convinced the government would discover this. Bernie's eldest son, Mark, committed suicide at the age of 46 in 2010 in his apartment by hanging himself because of the trust issue people applied to him due to his father's mistakes, while Andrew, at the age of 48, lost his battle to lymphoma. Meanwhile, his innocent wife, Ruth, was striped of all he belongings, and was forced to recreate herself after her husband's mistakes. Bernie claims that he had great grieveances for his family and their hardships.