The June issue of Vanity Fair has a 9,000-word article co-authored by Bernard Madoff’s secretary of more than 20 years, Eleanor Squillari. Squillari reveals more about Madoff’s well-publicized bizarre behavior and the craziness that went on at Madoff’s firm through the years. According to a preview of the article, Squillari discusses:
- Bernie’s personality: Madoff handled stress by lashing out at people. He would say “something nasty: You look terrible. You’re gaining weight. You’re stupid. I never took anything he said to me personally, because I knew it wasn’t about me, it was about him.”
- Bernie’s behavior in the weeks before his arrest. “He seem[ed] to be in a coma,” she observed. He was sitting in his office, “staring off into space. He began taking his blood-pressure every 15 minutes, refused to look at his mail, and was constantly meeting with the heads of his feeder funds and Frank DiPascali, ‘the go-to guy for the investment-advisory business.'”
- Bernie’s sleazy side: He had a “roving eye” and frequently visited massage parlors. “Once, I looked in his address book and found, under M, about a dozen phone numbers for his masseuses.”
- Bernie’s wife, Ruth: Ruth “wanted to be perfect for him. She would never allow herself to gain weight or have a hair out of place, and she always kept an eagle eye on him, especially when he was around young, attractive women.”
- The operations on the 17th floor, home to the Ponzi scheme: The 17th floor was staffed by “mostly low-level, clerical women, many of them working mothers, who probably made no more than $40,000 a year. They were young and naïve, with no background in finance, so they weren’t able to connect the dots.”
The full article entitled “Hello, Madoff” is on newsstands in New York and Los Angeles today, and nationwide on May 12.
