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1、Go BackPrint this pageSkip to contentPreview the current issue of Vanity FairPolitics & PowerTHE MADOFF CHRONICLES Madoffs WorldAmong Bernard Madoffs many dupes were his closest friends, including two tycoons he loved as surrogate fathers: the late Norman F. Levywhose girlfriend, supermodel Carmen D
2、ellOrefice, would lose her life savingsand the prominent philanthropist Carl J. Shapiro. Amid the sobs, screams, and curses in Aspen, Palm Beach, and New York, with victims sharing their stories, the author gets behind Madoffs affable faade, to reveal his most intimate betrayals.BY MARK SEAL APRIL 2
3、009 Over dinner in New York one night in January, I was airing my frustration concerning Bernard Madoff. Everybody had read about the losses he had inflicted on foundations associated with Steven Spielberg, Elie Wiesel, and Mort Zuckerman, I told my dinner companions, but after having interviewed ne
4、arly 40 of his other financial victims, I still couldnt get a picture of what the man was like. “If you want to know about Bernie Madoff,” said Mary T. Browne, the renowned psychic and author, who counsels many heavy hitters on Wall Street, “you need to talk to my friend Carmen DellOrefice.” She was
5、 referring to one of the original supermodels, the platinum-blonde beauty who had posed for Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Francesco Scavullo, and Norman Parkinson, and who had been a muse to Salvador Dal. She had first appeared on the cover of Vogue in 1946, when she was 15. “Nobody can give you bett
6、er insights into the Madoffs than Carmen,” Browne told me. “Ill see if shell talk to you.”Two days later, when I arrived at her Upper East Side apartment, DellOrefice was ready for me. Still gorgeous at 77, she led me to her bedroom, where she had laid out on her king-size coverlet piles of intimate
7、 photographs, canceled checks, and reams of investment statements spelling out her relationship with Madoff. Mary T. Browne was right. She had quite a story to tell.It began in the fall of 1993. Six years after the death of her fianc, the legendary television impresario and talk-show host David Suss
8、kind, a neighbor introduced Carmen to Norman F. Levy, a giant of mid-century New York City real estate, who, along with such titans as Harry Helmsley and Samuel LeFrak, had helped shape the city by filling its skyscrapers with blue-chip tenants. Then 80 and a widower, Levy had retired to a good life
9、 of travel, philanthropy, and passive investing, most notably with his best friend, Bernie Madoff.On Valentines Day 1994, after four months of dating, Levy made what Carmen called his “grandstand play” for her affection. He instructed her to meet him at the office of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Sec
10、urities, in the Lipstick Building, the oval red-granite monolith at 53rd Street and Third Avenue designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. “Bring your checkbook,” he said.Carmen arrived early, she remembered. “And there was a little man sitting behind a very big desk. Are you Mr. Madoff?, I asked.
11、”“Yes, and Im expecting you,” he said, his mouth pursed in what she would soon discover was his trademark smirk.“In back of me, I hear this booming voice: Did you bring your checkbook? I turned around and there was Norman, all six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-something pounds of him. Yes, Norman, I d
12、id.”“Then write one out for $100,000,” Levy told her. Carmen couldnt write a check for anywhere near that amount; she was still in arbitration after having lost most of her money in the stock market and having been forced to auction off her early modeling photographs at Sothebys the year before.“Ber
13、nie Madoff chuckled and said, Dont worry, the money is there. He added, Mr. Levy put it in your account.”“He Is My Son” “This is very special, what I am doing for you,” Levy told Carmen, indicating what an honor it was to be admitted into Bernies exclusive fund, which, while usually not as high as o
14、ther funds in an up market, never lost in a down market. Its 10 and 12 percent annual returns were totally dependable. Levys grandstand play worked. “I told Norman, yes, I would take a trip with him to London, and Bernie arranged for the honeymoon suite at the Lanesborough. It was the suite Bernie u
15、sually stayed in, but he gave it up for Norman. Bernie and Ruth, his wife, had a suite upstairs.”It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Along with her $100,000 investment, which, with additional infusions and the funds steady returns, grew into millions, Carmen got a new social life. She sh
16、owed me pictures and told me stories of dinners, family gatherings, charity balls, and Madoff company picnics, held at Madoffs home in Montauk, on Long Island, where the investment shaman would book every hotel room in the vicinity for his employees and their families. She recalled trips on yachts a
17、nd outings in New York and evenings in the Madoffs house in Palm Beach12 years of Norman and Carmen and Ruth and Bernie. “The intimacy of those events,” she said with a sigh. “Birthdays. Hanukkahs. Building a yacht for Mr. Levy in the last years of his life ” She showed me a picture of Madoff on the
18、 yacht, bare-chested and wet from a dip in the sea, kissing the white-haired Levy on the cheek. “Norman said, innumerable times, He is my son,” she told me, meaning that Levy considered Madoff his surrogate son, a member of his family.Bernie was quiet, not a storyteller, not a conversationalist,” sa
19、id Carmen. “I often thought he was perhaps bored. He was just Bernie, pleasant and polite.” He always deferred to Levy, who was 26 years his senior, and whom he called “my mentor of 40 years.” I asked if Madoff was ever flirtatious. “Never!,” Carmen exclaimed, adding that he rarely if ever touched a
20、lcohol. Even though Madoff didnt drink, he knew that Norman loved good red wine, so he meticulously planned wine-tasting tours for him. “He knew where all the vineyards were, and he arranged for Norman to do these excursions into the countryside. Everything was about Norman.”Showing me pictures of b
21、irthday parties and New Years Eve celebrationsMadoff in a silly paper hat, his calves showing, lounging on a divan, with Ruth, as always, at his sideCarmen said, “This was their idea of fun.” In other photographs, Madoff was whispering in Levys ear or had his arm slung around the big mans shoulders.
22、 “I think of him as always smiling,” said Carmen. “Bernie was poor and from Queens and made it big.” She said that Bernie and Ruth both still had a Queens accent, adding playfully, “You could tell they werent raised in Switzerland.” But then, Norman Levy had come from a similarly humble background.
23、He had attended high school in the Bronx and worked his way up from selling magazines and Fuller brushes to taking a low-level job at the Cross & Brown brokerage firm, of which he became C.E.O. in 1976. Though at one point he had an ownership stake in 70 properties, including the Seagram Building an
24、d 21 shopping centers across America, one of his proudest treasures was his friendship with Madoff. Listen, it may have been bravado, Norman grandstanding to me that he spotted a genius early on. He would say, Bernie Madoff is the most honorable, smart person,” said Carmen. Madoff responded in kind.
25、 “He was shy, but so sure of himself. He always did so much for Normans comfort in the smallest details.” Madoff had his suits tailor-made at Kilgour, on Savile Row, in London. Soon, Levy was having his suits custom-made in London, too.When Levy decided to build a yacht so that he could stop charter
26、ing Malcolm Forbess each season, Madoff helped oversee the construction of a 127-foot Royal Denship. “And when we were in the South of France, he arranged for an armed bodyguard for us. Bernie knew about piracy, because he was an oceangoing person.” When Levys yacht set sail, Bernie and Ruth were on
27、 board. “Norman and Bernie never talked business, except on the telephone,” Carmen told me. When the men watched television or films, the choices were Levys; when they listened to music, Levy selected and Madoff (whose tastes leaned to the likes of Neil Diamond) went along. After dinner, the Madoffs
28、 would depart, to their suite at the Htel du Cap-Eden-Roc, in Antibes, or to their house in the South of France. Theyd return the next morning, sometimes with provisions, particularly Normans favorite ice cream, and whether they were in Monte Carlo or Palm Beach, the two women would go shopping. Rut
29、h was as polite, pleasant, and inconspicuous as her husband.The Madoffs favorite New York restaurant, I learned, was Primola, a friendly Italian place on Second Avenue near 64th Street. The waiters there told me how Madoff and his wife would arrive, always around 6:30, ask for a quiet table at the b
30、ack, order the same thing (small salad, then chicken scarpiello and Diet Coke or red wine for him, fish and white wine for her, no dessert, no coffee), and be out in 50 minutes flat, leaving a 20 percent tip on what was always a modest bill. “I know him for 30 years,” said the owner, Giuliano Zulian
31、i, who met Madoff while working as a waiter. “When I would talk to him, though, his wife would look down at the table. In all the years she knew me, she never spoke to me.” Dominick, the assistant matre d, said, “Now everybody is asking for the Madoff table, but I always say, The F.B.I. already has
32、it.” One night when I was there, two women walked in, and one of them announced, “This is our last dinner at Primola. My family lost all of our money to Bernie Madoff.”Once, after Levys health began to fail, Madoff arranged for a helicopter to transport him for medical treatment. And when Levy died,
33、 in 2005, at 93, Madoff delivered a eulogy at the funeral. “Norman told me that Bernie was the executor of his will,” said Carmen. “Before Norman passed away, there was the Betty and Norman F. Levy Foundation,” she said, referring to the charitable institution Levy had founded with his late wife and
34、 left to his heirs, with a reported $244 million in assets in 2007, to be used for causes ranging from cancer research to Yeshiva University. “Long before he died, he had given both of his children their own money, and each had created a charitable foundation. All three foundations closed after Dece
35、mber 11,” she saidthe day Madoff admitted to F.B.I. agents that his investment fund, into which approximately 13,500 individual investors and charities had put their money, was “one big lie.” (Both of Levys children, Jeanne Levy-Church and Francis Levy, declined to comment.)After Levys death, Carmen
36、 said, she went out to dinner several times with the Madoffs. But she got the news of Bernies arrest by telephone. “At ten minutes to five, Lillian, a girlfriend, called me up. Lillian had $400,000 with him, all she had in her life, and shes 68. She said, Are you all right? I said, Of course Im all
37、right. Why? She said, You didnt hear yet? I said, Hear what? She said, Theyve arrested Bernie Madoff! And I said, For what? And she said, Its all a fraud. Turn on the television. By five minutes to five, I had moved past the fact that everything I thought I had on paper was gone. Ten minutes past fi
38、ve, I called Bernies private office number, and a secretary picked up,” she continued. “I said, This is Carmen DellOrefice.”“We just found out less than 45 minutes ago,” the secretary said.“Then its so?”“It seems so. I dont know,” she said.At that point in her story, Carmen shook her head. “I am acc
39、epting that what I thought I was experiencing was a projection of a person who wasnt there. If I didnt take all the pictures I took all those years, I would say, Carmen, youre delusional. I know these people did not start out doing harm. So many people have been hurt, I feel badly about trying to sa
40、y anything good. But Im starting from where I was knowing them. Because Im hurt, too. For the second time in my life, Ive lost all of my life savings.”At seven p.m. on December 11, Carmen got a call from Norman Levys daughter, Jeanne Levy-Church, who contributed millions to good causes around the wo
41、rld through her JEHT Foundation. (The name stands for Justice, Equality, Human dignity, and Tolerance.) “She said, I just want you to know: at four oclock today, I had to close down my foundation.”Sitting there in Carmen DellOrefices Park Avenue bedroom, listening to this elegant, charming woman spe
42、ak about the Bernie Madoff she had known before his Waterloo, I realized that her remembrance of him as a generally quiet, caring, devoted little man was the most damning testimony I had heard yet. I thought to myself, If a son could loot the fortune of his father, what would he do to a stranger?“Pl
43、aying the Spread”In truth, I had been trying for months to invest money with Madoff. As the stock market fell precipitously in the fall of 2008, I would hear my friends in Aspen, Colorado, the affluent resort town where I live, gloat about the kindly Jewish uncle, the financial genius, who didnt jus
44、t keep their money safe but paid dividends, while everyone elses portfolio plummeted by 40 percent. “Bernies gone to cash,” one said. “Bernies in Treasury bills,” said another. “Thank God for Bernie!” said a third.In November, I invited a friend and longtime Madoff investor to dinner and literally b
45、egged him to get me in. He listened politely, then shook his head slowly. “Forget it,” he said. Bernie was closed; Bernie had a multi-million-dollar minimum; Bernie didnt need my money. His discouraging response only made me want Bernie all the more.A few weeks later, on December 11, I was trying my
46、 luck again. My wife and I were having dinner in another Aspen restaurant with another friend, who, thanks to investing with Madoff for 20 years, had recently retired to a life of golf and skiing. In the course of the evening, the cell phone of the investors companion rang a number of times, but she
47、 didnt answer right away. When she finally did, she came away with unbelievable news: Bernie Madoff had been arrested and had reportedly confessed to cheating clients of nearly $50 billion in a Ponzi scheme. Within hours we knew that half a dozen of our friends had been hit, and that my dinner compa
48、nions retirement was over.Once the cell phones started ringing on the slopes, that day and the next, a previously unknown social class emerged in the fancy resort: the newly needy. People rushed home, where the flat screen was filled with the news, and gradually came to realize that one life was gon
49、e and another had begun. “Hysterical” was how one man described to me the mood in his home, adding that the hysteria was followed by humiliation and shame. As another said, Who wants to go out in a resort town where people are celebrating if you cant pay a restaurant tab and everybody around you knows it?As Christmas turned to New Years, the roster of the stricken had balloonedtoo many t
