‘My clients were greedy, I am a good person’: says Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff

WASHINGTON - Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, who ruined many people, has claimed that the people he scammed were greedy and thinks that he is the one people should feel sorry for.

He said that hiding the whole billion-dollar scheme secret from his family was a major burden.

During a phone interview he said: “It was a nightmare for me”,”Even the regulators felt sorry for me. They said, ‘How did you live with this? Not being able to tell anybody?” the New York Daily News reported.

Madoff has blamed his clients who lost billions in his fake investment fund as they failed to question how he was making steady profits even in down years.

He accepted that he never explained his strategies or methods and said: “I absolutely refused to do it. I said, ‘You don’t like it, take your money out,’ which of course they never did.”

He said that he told all his clients not to invest and risk their money, which they cannot afford to lose, but all his clients were greedy.

He said he went along when his clients begged him to invest their money.

He pointed that by the end of 1990s his investors, who kept getting paid off handsomely, must have become aware of his fraud business.

He also blamed the regulators who should have pointed out faults in his business.

He said: “Look, none of my clients, even if they lost every penny they put in there, can plead poverty.”

He added, “Now if you listen to them, they’re living out of dumpsters and they don’t have any money and I’m sure it’s a traumatic experience to some, but I made a lot of money for people.”

Madoff is completing his 150 years sentence in Butner prison and says that he enjoys a certain status with the other prisoners.

“My notoriety impresses them, It shouldn’t, but it does”, he said.

He added: “I’m not the kind of person I’m being portrayed as, I am a good person.” (ANI)