“An elevator opening onto the mysterious 17th floor of the Lipstick Building, in Manhattan, where a small staff helped to manage Bernard Madoff’s exclusive investment fund.”
Mark Seal in Vanity Fair, Madoff’s World:
“Shortly after Madoff’s arrest, Rabbi Moshe Scheiner advised his congregation at the Palm Beach Synagogue to look beyond money, beyond financial losses, to matters of deeper importance. In New York, Rabbi Marc Gellman wrote in an open letter to Madoff in Newsweek about the pain he had inflicted on the Jewish community: “There must be some new word invented to describe the way you have redefined betrayal.” Rabbi Mark Borovitz, a reformed scamster and alcoholic himself, whose Los Angeles foundation lost between $200,000 and $300,000 to Madoff, called Madoff’s crooked style “affinity theft,” in which the con man preys on the idea that you can trust your own people. “Whether it’s Latino or black or Jewish or Christian, everybody wants to trust their own. Bernie Madoff took our trust and raped it,” said Borovitz. “He took advantage of every vulnerability, because he knew our vulnerable spots.”
When asked to describe Madoff’s personality, most of the people I interviewed in Palm Beach could come up with very little. “Pleasant, charming, but reclusive,” said one. “I go out nine nights out of seven, and I never saw him out once,” said another. “We’d never heard of him before December 11,” said Jeff Ostrowski, of The Palm Beach Post. Madoff’s barber, who had cut his hair and given him manicures and pedicures at least once a month for 17 years, couldn’t recall Madoff saying anything other than greetings and small talk.”
