Bernie Madoff and The Wizard of Lies Part Two
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger
Audacy
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2021
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the death of Bernie Madoff earlier this week, Mark and I decided to re-run an interview we did a few years back with Diana Henriques.
Madoff is perhaps the most notorious name in the history of Wall Street.
By now we all know the story. Madoff conducted a Ponzi scheme that is considered to be the largest in U.S. history. Over the course of decades, Madoff stole billions of dollars from his clients and finally, amid the financial crisis of 2008, the crime came to a screeching halt.
How on earth was he able to pull it off for so long, when there were plenty of warning signs and whistleblowers who tried to alert regulators that something was amiss?
One of the journalists covering the scandal was Henriques, then a staff reporter at The New York Times, who specialized in investigative reporting on white-collar crime, market regulation and corporate governance. Diana used her countless hours of work as the lead reporter on the story as a catalyst to write the bestselling book, The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.
Diana had incredible access, including the first interview with an imprisoned Madoff.
Robert De Niro was so drawn to the character of Bernie Madoff as Henriques depicted him, that he bought the film rights to “The Wizard of Lies" and it was turned into a film for HBO.
If you’ve yet to see “The Wizard of Lies,” go watch it. DVR it, stream it, whatever the method, just watch it. It’s incredibly well done and stars Robert De Niro as Bernie Madoff and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ruth Madoff.
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"Jill on Money" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Jill on Money Podcast. It is Sunday, April 18th. And this weekend, we are |
| 0:10.3 | re-airing an interview that we conducted with journalist and author Diana Henriquez. |
| 0:16.4 | She wrote the book about Bernie Madoff. And if you didn't listen to yesterday's episode, |
| 0:21.2 | please do so. If you're not familiar with the story, Bernie Madoff was the biggest Ponzi |
| 0:26.5 | Schema since maybe Charles Ponzi himself. He died during the week at age 82. He had served a |
| 0:33.2 | decade of his 150-year sentence. And you know, at this point was considered a $65 billion Ponzi |
| 0:40.1 | Scheme. $14 billion was actually recovered through the legal process and the trustee process. So |
| 0:46.8 | a lot of people who thought they lost everything did get a bunch of money back. That is good. Anyway, |
| 0:51.1 | in this second part of our interview with Diana, we discuss with her how her book was |
| 0:56.0 | adapted to an HBO movie. And whether or not she thought Madoff was capable of having remorse. |
| 1:03.3 | I found that to be quite interesting. And so if you get a chance, after you listen to this |
| 1:07.6 | interview, go check out either her book, which is fantastic. The Wizard of Lies are head over to |
| 1:12.4 | HBO because you can still watch that movie, The Wizard of Lies. Okay, here is part two of our |
| 1:17.9 | interview with Diana Henriquez. The book is a smashing success. Fantastic 2011. Now tell me how this |
| 1:24.9 | happens. Like, do you get a call one day and they say, hi, I'm from HBO. What happens? I need |
| 1:29.7 | to know this. You need to know. Because it's like you're such a, first of all, you know, I adore you. |
| 1:34.8 | And from the mill and I met you, I adored you, but in 2000, whenever it was 11. But what happened? |
| 1:41.6 | Well, my literary agent had the wisdom to consult an agent here in New York whose job it is to |
| 1:50.3 | market print products to people who make films or TV shows. And so she consulted him before |
| 1:58.2 | the book was finished. And he said, sure, I'll take it on. The first big bite of interest he got |
| 2:04.5 | was from Tribeca films, which is Robert De Niro's production company here in New York from |
| 2:09.0 | his longtime partner, Jane Rosenthal. She read the book. She loved the book. She arranged the |
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