"’The Mafia guy was carrying a gun," Mr. [Burt] Ross says of the 1974 incident, which led to several convictions. With Mr. Madoff, ‘it was something very different. But I have more respect for the Mafia. At least they didn't pretend to be anything more than what they are.’" – Former Fort Lee (N.J.) Mayor Burt Ross, on being bilked by New York financier Bernard Madoff, quoted by Susan Pulliam, “Former Mayor, Millions Lost, Describes How He Was Lulled,” The Wall Street Journal, December 20-21, 2008 (Behind WSJ firewall)
(Ross became briefly famous in the 1970s when, as mayor of Fort Lee, he rejected a $500,000 bribe from a group linked to organized crime, then risked his life to expose it. Now, as this article discusses, the bulk of his net worth has been put at risk by Madoff.
It would take a Dickens or a Trollope—or, perhaps nowadays, Tom Wolfe—to invent a Madoff. Even that surname—it rhymes, don’t you know, with “made off”—has a Dickensian flavor. What this particular article does well, however, is keep in focus what’s really important about his sordid life of crime: his victims—not just the wealthy ones such as Mets owner Fred Wilpon or film director Steven Spielberg, but those like Ross and his wife Joan who are far closer to the likes of you and me—and, it turns out, far more financially vulnerable to the fallout from his machinations.
My questions are these: How many more Madoffs are out there right now? How many—many more—victims of these charlatans are there? How many more such outrages will have to be endured before we act, as America did in the Great Depression, to put obstacles in the way of such massive, heartrending crimes?)
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