Wealth, Power, Greed and Suicide: Mark Madoff, Son of Bernard "Bernie" Madoff Commits Suicide

According to a FoxNews.com article ( http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/11/official-madoff-son-dead-nyc-apartment/ ), Mark Madoff, 46, one of the sons of Ponzi-Schemer, Bernard "Bernie" Madoff, has committed suicide. He hung himself in his New York apartment while his 2-year-old son slept. His wife and 4-year-old daughter were away on vacation at Florida's Disney World and he sent his wife a note simply saying that someone should check on their 2-year-old son and that he loved her. That was it. There was no suicide note. He also had two other children, ages 16 and 18, from a previous marriage. My first thought is that somebody killed Mark Madoff and rigged it to look like a suicide, but it seems that the ordeal simply took its toll.

To learn about exactly what a Ponzi Scheme is, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme.

Bernard Madoff, who's incarcerated and serving 150 years, left his sons with a legacy of corruption and fraud in what turned out to be an unbearable burden for at least one son. The Madoff name will forever be synonymous with pure greed. Father Madoff, the multi-billion dollar conman and super-shyster, will always be forever known as the Gordon Gekko of investing and Mark Madoff could no longer deal with the pain and shame. On the 2^nd anniversary of his father's arrest for the most devastating case of investment fraud in U.S. history, he hung himself with a dog's leash.

According to the FoxNews.com article, Mark Madoff was depressed and despondent over public scrutiny and his own alleged connections to his father's crimes. According to people who knew him, it had become too much for him to bear. His attorney said in a written statement, according to the article, "Mark Madoff took his own life today. This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy. Mark was an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime, who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo."

Mark Madoff and his brother Andrew, who both worked for their father's company and were raised in the lap of luxury, confessed what they knew about their father's crimes, but basically said that they knew nothing of any wrong-doing until their father told them about what he'd done (over two decades) shortly before he was arrested in 2008. The two sons continue to be investigated, have been subject to public scorn, scrutiny and ridicule and have been named in multiple lawsuits, which say that while they may not have known about the details, they did profit from their father's illegal activities with lavish lifestyles funded by ill-gotten gains.

Bernie Madoff, the Baron of Bilk, age 72, conned numerous investors out of money in the billions that included individuals, businesses, charitable organizations and even celebrities. The amount is estimated at an unbelievable and staggering $20 billion dollars. According to the FoxNews.com article, Mark Madoff's wife had filed to have her surname and her two children's surname changed from Madoff to Morgan in hopes of escaping the scrutiny.

This is a very, very sad story and a sad situation for all involved and I am sorry for the family and friends that Mark Madoff has left behind, especially his children. I can't even begin to imagine what he was going through and how stressed and ashamed he must have felt, but suicide is never the correct answer, especially for those left behind.

Maybe, I'm wrong, as well as bias and judgmental, but I've always believed that a situation is never hopeless as long as a person is reasonably healthy and mentally functional. Anything can be worked out or dealt with no matter how traumatic or impossible it may seem. I understand that everybody deals with life's stresses differently and this is a lot of stress for one person to have to deal with, but killing yourself with a 2-year-old in your care is a bit much and leaving behind 4 children, two of whom are just babies really, a wife and an ex-wife and other family members, is a cop-out and the ultimate act of selfishness.

The world will never know why Mark Madoff really took his own life, but we can only speculate. Maybe it was the stress and hopelessness and the thought of losing all of his material possessions and cash and having to live like most of the inhabitants of the planet Earth. While the thought of losing it all in life is horrible for anyone to fathom and to face, money, affluence, opulence and material possessions are not life. Life was the family Mark Madoff left behind to fend for themselves in the wake of all this madness created from greed.