11 ‘Successful’ People Who Were Actually Huge Frauds

Before he was outed as a criminal, few were seen as more respectable or smarter than Bernie Madoff. His is a quintessentially American rags-t0-riches story— except for the part with all the crimes.

The son of a plumber, Madoff founded an investment company at 22, partly with money he’d saved from working as a lifeguard, and climbed the ladder of Wall Street until he was named chairman of the NASDAQ. For decades, rich people begged to be included among the select few he counted as clients, because he was such a genius, he could make money even when the market took a crap!

Except Madoff never invested his clients’ money. He put their deposits in an account, sent falsified returns, and paid any withdrawals with newer investors’ dough. It was an unimaginative, dull-as-dirt Ponzi scheme, notable mainly for its scale: At Madoff’s sentencing, Judge Denny Chin remarked that the accused’s crimes were literally “off the charts,” as federal sentencing guidelines for fraud top out at $400 million in losses. Madoff’s scheme was worth about $64.8 billion. Not bad for a plumber’s son, eh?