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IPFS News Link • Death

Bernie Madoff, mastermind of the nation's biggest investment fraud, dies at 82

• CNBC

KEY POINTS

-Bernie Madoff masterminded the biggest investment fraud in U.S. history, ripping off tens of thousands of people of as much as $65 billion.

-Madoff was serving a 150-year prison sentence for his scheme, which investigators said defrauded as many as 37,000 people in 136 countries over four decades.

-Victims included the famous — director Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon,  former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel — and ordinary investors. 

Bernard Madoff, mastermind of the biggest investment fraud in U.S. history, ripping off tens of thousands of clients of as much as $65 billion, died Wednesday. He was 82.

His death at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, was confirmed by the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Madoff died apparently from natural causes, the AP reported earlier, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter. He would have turned 83 on April 29.

Madoff was serving a 150-year sentence at the prison, where he had been treated for what his attorney called terminal kidney disease.