A Financial Sociopath/Serial Killer is how Jim Campbell, author of “Madoff Talks” described Bernie Madoff.
Netflix acquired rights to Jim’s book and Jim served as an Executive Producer on the docuseries ‘Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street which debuted Jan. 4th. I watched it last night.
It’s a 4 part series about the unimaginable corruption and fraudulent schemes committed by the globally infamous former chairman of NASDAQ and American financier Bernie Madoff who orchestrated the largest Ponzi scheme in world history fleecing thousands of investors out of $65 billion. It’s also about ‘the willfully blind financial system that allowed it to flourish for decades’ said the Netflix trailer.
Jim Campbell, who joined me on The Debbie Nigro Show, was able to get the most comprehensive insider account of how this could happen, through his exclusive interviews with all the players including Madoff himself through personal communications with him while he was in prison. Jim and I are friendly from years in the radio business and I wanted to help him share his success in having his book optioned by Netflix.
It’s an incredible and outrageous story that Jim personally got the last word on. And honestly, the last word from Bernie Madoff from prison.
Jim felt lucky that Joe Berlinger, the top Netflix true crime documentary director was behind it. He’s the guy who did the Jeffrey Epstein, Elaine Maxwell, Ted Bundy, and Whitey Bulger documentaries too.
Jim said, Joe actually took the story from the book and adhered to it, and to him, that was a great honor.
“It’s a very complex story, said Jim. And he told it basically like I did. He let me basically be able to do that. It’s his thing. It’s his show. He’s done everything in it. The way he put it together, the recreations that are so creative, the two sets of the 19th, 17th floors that reflected Madoff’s brain split between one totally legitimate, and one totally criminal enterprise. Berlinger did that. So it’s been a big thrill for me. By the way, the co-executive producer credit, my contract said producer. So they promoted me without even telling me I didn’t see it till I saw it on the screen. “
Jim Campbell wrote the book “Madoff Talks” and then Netflix optioned the rights for their docuseries, ‘Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street. ‘Optioning the Rights’, means Netflix purchased exclusive access to his book for three years. Jim also had turned over 40,000 documents to them as well.
So how long did it take for Jim to write the book ‘Madoff Talks’?
“If you include the fact that I started talking to Bernie Madoff back in like 2011 it took about 10 years”.
I wondered what it felt like for Jim the first time he spoke directly to Bernie Madoff?
Jim said, “”Yeah, you know he just destroyed so many people’s lives. And remember back at that time, he was like the biggest villain on the planet. And yet he was very charismatic, brilliant, had total recall. And you could see that his ego was so strong.
What Madoff said to Jim was, “I had a legitimate business. I’m brilliant. My strategy, the fake one called split strike conversion actually worked except Jim, I know I wasn’t doing real trading”.
Jim in his conversations with Madoff described him as sort of delusional. “You know, justifying that it worked, but then he was not really doing it for real. He had an unfathomable brain that he could compartmentalize it the way he did. Madoff built the business from scratch, and was doing the number three volume on the New York Stock Exchange. And you think, well, then something must have happened over here. he must have lost some money and like a gambler, he made the classic mistake. He’s told me that story. “
Recalling the conversation with Madoff, Jim says it was like, “Yeah, I was going to do a Ponzi scheme under the table. It was a mistake. I’d get the money back and no one would ever notice.”
Jim shared that Madoff was building the legitimate business and the Ponzi business at the exact same time. Intentionally, intentionally. And at the same time.
“It wasn’t intentionally in terms of I’m a crook and I’m trying to steal your money, said Jim. It was he couldn’t psychologically accept losses. The legitimate business is trading. You’re making commissions markets up markets down. He suddenly saw he could lose money on trades and he could not deal with that. And that’s what the genesis of it. But to do them at the same time, you have to have one screwed up mind.”
I found it crazy that so many really smart people just kept handing Madoff money especially as the documentary pointed out, that there was no official letterheadon nice paper on the statements from the bogus company that was sent to customers. They were more like graph sheets from a laser printer and I found it t absurd no one ever questioned that? No one?
Jim said, “No one. No. I never found anybody that understood what his strategy was, which was very simple conceptually and should have mirrored the stock market, which obviously it didn’t because it always went up.” “They both bought this veneer of trust that it worked.”
It’s my experience that most people buy the person behind the brand in most categories in life. So here you have this monster who was once revered, who I guess people assumed could not do anything wrong, and he creates a bond scheme and ends up 65 billion dollars get lost and a zillion people’s lives get wrecked. One poor guy featured in the Netflix series lost not only his money, but his house. It was hard to watch him speak through his tears. I’m aware some of Madoff’s victims got recourse and retribution. In this podcast Jim speaks to where that money came from and admits its a sore subject for him because usually nobody gets money back in a ponzi scheme.
Jim Campbell thought the documentary was really well done and enjoyed working with everyone involved out at a big studio in New Jersey where they built the sets.
“I got to meet everybody out there and the interesting thing was, none of these guys came out of a serial killer documentary world. None of them knew a thing about finance. So they actually let me teach them for about five months before they start filming. Then they filmed for four or five months. And then Netflix took it to get it ready for the other countries for three or four months. And thats was the process. I do not know the Netflix people very well. But they, they treated me incredibly well. Radical Media is the name of the production company, and Joe Burland was the director. I met all their folks and all the other producers and other fabulous contributors. “
I brought up to Jim that the opening part of the first segment or the first portion of the documentary, the scene where a grown son and his mother who was invested with Bernie Madoff ran into him in Palm Beach at the golf course. The son says hey, you just ran into Bernie Madoff! And the mother responds, yes but did you notice he never looks directly at you?” I thought that was a very loud. I asked Jim if anybody else had said that along the way?
“I haven’t heard that, but what he did have was a series of ticks, that made him look real strange, like there was something that was in his brain that he was trying to keep down.”
He went on to say about Madoff, “He didn’t like to meet with any of the people in the dirty business, he loved to meet with the Presidents of the brokerage firms, for what his real legitimate business did which was trade for customers of Schwab and folks like that. And so he did all the execution for them. So yes, he was a strange guy. “
So did his family members know what was going on?
“I did that in chapter 8 of my book, you know, I started my book with the Justice Department, the trustee, the media and the people all thinking that Mark, Andrew, and Ruth had to know or were involved. I did my own investigation. It literally came right down to the end because one of the things is Bernie took 800 million of customers money and stuck it into the back door of the legitimate business, when it had problems through the trading desk, calling them trading losses and covering up, etc. Well, who ran the trading desk, Mark and Andrew? So that didn’t look good, but I did figure it out and I contrary to what all these other folks say they did not know about it. They were not involved. Does that mean they’re they shouldn’t have known about it? Well, shouldn’t the SEC have known about it? “
“Now, the real story is the government failed, Wall Street failed, all these firms were shipping money, right? And Bernie gave them the fees back, which they explained as their job is only due diligence. Someone has money and they’re is looking for these kinds of things, say, very conservative. And say Bob is a money manager and it’s his job is to see that the other person is real, that he’s doing what you say and puts the money with the person that matches. Bernie wouldn’t allow any due diligence. So they took fees they would never get in order not to ask questions. Oh, that’s called willful blindness. That’s really loud. Some made over a billion dollars in fees.”
Jim Campbell says Bernie Madoff had no empathy. Bernie Madoff would tell me, “Jim, my lawyers tell me I’m supposed to show empathy. I don’t believe these people are living in dumpsters now like everybody is saying and they don’t have and by the way, I don’t see it happening it.” The other thing Jim said Bernie Madoff suffered from was narcissism.” “Always the victim and pathological lying and control and the ego just dominates you and both of those things were true in his life. “
“But I gotta tell you”, said Jim, “he came across very low key, charismatic, trusting. He ran his firm, particularly the legitimate side as a family. He paid for people’s honeymoon. He paid for sudden emergencies. And this is before he stole the money to pay for it. So there were people that I know that stayed in that firm because he treated them well.”
What has changed in terms of regulations in the financial industry since this story?
Now, if you take Bernie’s instance, they can catch the Ponzi scheme now, the SEC. They did five investigations back then and never saw it. They know how to look for Ponzi scheme. now except maybe if it’s offshore, where a lot of the stuff is. But the SEC is not a cop, which is what people believe it is and what they try to tell you it is. They’re not equipped to find these things upfront. And the crypto thing has been unregulated now for several years.
Aware that Bernie Madoff died in prison I was curious where Bernie Madoff might be buried? Jim said nobody had ever asked that question.
“Okay, if you know Jewish custom, you are supposed to be in the ground within 24 hours. His remains are cremated, which is also not in the Jewish faith or custom. His remains are in a jar in his lawyer’s office because the family wouldn’t take them.”
This is the podcast of the insightful conversation I had with Jim Campbell on the Debbie Nigro show about the man behind the biggest Ponzi scam in history.
