bernard lawrence bernie madoff was an american financier who executed the largest ponzi scheme in history defrauding thousands of investors out of an estimated 65 billion over the course of at least 17 years 
he was also a pioneer in electronic trading and chairman of the nasdaq stock exchange in the early 1990s madoff died in a prison hospital at age 82 on april 14 2021 while serving a 150 year sentence for money laundering securities fraud and several other felonies 1investopedia ellen lindnerearly life and educationmadoff was born in brooklyn new york on april 29 1938 to ralph and sylvia madoff his father worked as a plumber before entering the financial industry with his wife 2 they founded gibraltar securities which was ultimately forced to close by the sec 34bernie earned a bachelor s degree in political science from hofstra university in 1960 and briefly attended law school at brooklyn law school while in college bernie married his high school sweetheart ruth n e alpern with whom he later founded bernard l madoff investment securities llc in 1960 3at first he traded penny stocks with 5 000 he earned installing sprinklers and working as a lifeguard 5notable accomplishmentsmadoff appeared to have a chip on his shoulder and felt that he was not part of the wall street in crowd in an interview with journalist steve fishman madoff said we were a small firm we weren t a member of the new york stock exchange it was very obvious 6according to madoff he began to make a name for himself as a scrappy market maker i was perfectly happy to take the crumbs he told fishman giving the example of a client who wanted to sell eight bonds a bigger firm would disdain that kind of order but madoff s would complete it 7success finally came when he and his brother peter began to build electronic trading capabilities artificial intelligence in madoff s words that attracted massive order flow and boosted the business by providing insights into market activity i had all these major banks coming down entertaining me madoff told fishman it was a head trip 8he and four other wall street mainstays processed half of the new york stock exchange s order flow controversially he paid for much of it and by the late 1980s madoff was making in the vicinity of 100 million a year madoff would become chair of the nasdaq exchange in 1990 and also served in that role in 1991 and 1993 9scandal scheme and crimeat some point madoff attracted investors by claiming to generate large steady returns through an investing strategy called split strike conversion a legitimate trading strategy 