Madoff’s wife breaks cover to buy cheese
The wife of Bernard Madoff, the New York financier who swindled more than $650 billion out of unsuspecting investors, braved the wrath of the public this week by breaking cover to buy cheese.
As Madoff sat in jail awaiting a possible 150-year sentence after pleading guilty to fraud, Ruth Madoff decided to visit a local grocery store to pick up some Jarlsberg.
According to celebrity-spotting Web site Gawker.com, Mrs Madoff was chased by paparazzi photographers as she dashed to Manhattan’s Food Emporium to load up on Norwegian cheese.
As the flashbulbs popped, Madoff lost her temper, Gawker said, lashing out at the press attention.
“Oh, this is crazy, forget this,” she said. “Oh, very exciting, I went to the grocery store.”
Gawker speculated that the shopping excursion was an attempt by Madoff to portray herself as an ordinary person – but the stunt failed as she failed to select an ordinary cheese.
Bernard Madoff earlier this week pleaded guilty to 11 counts of money laundering and fraud relating to a massive ponzi scheme that use new investor’s cash to pay established investors falsely inflated dividends.
The amount involved in Madoff’s scam – some $650 billion – could buy enough Jarlsberg to construct 445 Eiffel Towers entirely from the buttery-tasting mild cheese.