史上最大庞氏骗局主谋麦道夫逝世
Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in History, Is Dead at 82
DIANA B. HENRIQUES
2021年4月15日
Bernard L. Madoff, the one-time senior statesman of Wall Street who in 2008 became the human face of an era of financial misdeeds and missteps for running the largest and possibly most devastating Ponzi scheme in financial history, died Wednesday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina. He was 82.
周三，伯纳德·L·麦道夫(Bernard L. Madoff)在北卡罗来纳州巴特纳的联邦医疗中心(Federal Medical Center)逝世，享年82岁。这位曾经在华尔街极具威信的人物，因操纵了金融史上规模最大、可能也是最具破坏性的庞氏骗局，在2008年成为一个时代金融不法与失策的象征。
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed the death. Madoff, who was serving a 150-year prison sentence, had asked for early release in February 2020, saying in a court filing that he had less than 18 months to live after entering the final stages of kidney disease and that he had been admitted to palliative care.
联邦监狱局(Federal Bureau of Prisons)确认了他的死讯。麦道夫被判150年监禁，他在2020年2月申请提前释放，在一份法庭文件中表示，他的肾病进入晚期，只剩下不到18个月的生命，他已经接受姑息治疗。
Madoff’s enormous fraud began among friends, relatives and country club acquaintances but ultimately grew to encompass major charities like Hadassah, universities like Brandeis and Yeshiva, institutional investors, and wealthy families in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
麦道夫规模巨大的骗局始于友人、亲属和乡村俱乐部的熟人之间，但最终扩展到哈达萨(Hadassah)这样的大型慈善机构、布兰戴斯(Brandeis)和叶史瓦(Yeshiva)等大学、机构投资者，以及欧洲、拉丁美洲和亚洲的富豪家族。
Buttressed by elaborate account statements and a deep reservoir of trust from his investors and regulators, Madoff steered his fraud scheme safely through recessions and crises. But the financial meltdown that began in mid-2007 and reached a climax with the failure of Lehman Bros. in September 2008 was his undoing.
在精心制作的财务报表和投资者与监管机构深厚信任的支持下，麦道夫在衰退和危机中安稳地操纵着他的诈骗计划。但始于2007年中、并在2008年9月雷曼兄弟(Lehman Bros.)破产时达到高潮的金融危机成了他的末日。
Hedge funds and other institutional investors, pressured by demands from their own clients, began to take hundreds of millions of dollars from their Madoff accounts. By December 2008, more than $12 billion had been withdrawn and little fresh cash was coming in to cover redemptions.
对冲基金和其他机构投资者迫于其客户的压力，开始从他们在麦道夫那里的账户提取数亿美元。到2008年12月，超过120亿美元的资金被取走，却几乎没有新的现金流来支付这些赎回。
Faced with ruin, Madoff confessed to his two sons that his money-management operation was actually “one big lie.” They reported his confession to law enforcement, and the next day, Dec. 11, 2008, he was arrested at his Manhattan penthouse.
面对破产，麦道夫向他的两个儿子承认，他的资金管理业务实际上是个“弥天大谎”。他们将他的自白报告给了执法部门，第二天，也就是2008年12月11日，他在曼哈顿的顶层公寓被捕。
The victims of his fraud, some of whom went overnight from comfortable wealth to frantic desperation, numbered in the thousands. The paper losses totaled $64.8 billion.
他的诈骗受害者众达数万，其中一些人在一夜之间从财富充裕落至了极度绝望的境地。账面亏损总计648亿美元。
More than money was lost. At least two people, in despair over their losses, committed suicide. A major Madoff investor suffered a fatal heart attack after months of contentious litigation over his role in the scheme. Some investors lost their homes.
损失的不只是金钱。至少有两人因对亏损感到绝望而自杀。麦道夫的一位主要投资者在长达数月的一场诉讼中心脏病发作而死，该诉讼是有关其在骗局中所扮演的角色。一些投资者失去了他们的住所。
Madoff was not spared in these tragic aftershocks. His older son, Mark, committed suicide in his Manhattan apartment on Dec. 11, 2010, the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.
麦道夫也未能在这些悲惨的余震中幸免。2010年12月11日，在他被捕的两周年纪念日，麦道夫的长子马克(Mark)自杀于自己的曼哈顿公寓。
In June 2012, Bernard Madoff’s brother, Peter, a lawyer by training, pleaded guilty to federal tax and securities fraud charges related to his role as the chief compliance officer at his older brother’s firm. In December 2012, he forfeited all his personal property to the government to compensate his brother’s victims and was sentenced to a 10-year prison term. And on Sept. 3, 2014, Madoff’s younger son, Andrew, died of cancer at the age of 48.
2012年6月，伯纳德·麦道夫的弟弟、律师出身的彼得(Peter)因在其兄的公司担任首席合规官，承认了与此相关的联邦税务和证券欺诈罪名。2012年12月，政府没收了他的所有个人资产，以补偿他哥哥的受害者，他也被判处10年有期徒刑。2014年9月3日，麦道夫的小儿子安德鲁(Andrew)死于癌症，年仅48岁。
Besides the human toll, professional reputations were destroyed. More than a dozen prominent hedge funds and money managers had to admit that they had forwarded their clients’ money to Madoff and lost it all.
除了身家性命，很多人的职业声誉也毁于一旦。十几名著名对冲基金和财富经理不得不承认，他们把客户的钱交给了麦道夫，结果全部赔光。
And for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which unsuccessfully investigated more than a half-dozen credible tips about Madoff’s fraud scheme since at least 1992, it was the most humiliating failure in its 75-year history.
对于美国证券交易委员会（Securities And Exchange Commission，简称SEC）而言，这是其75年历史上最丢脸的一次失败。最早从1992年开始，SEC就对麦道夫欺诈案的超过六条可靠线索进行了调查，但均未有成果。
Bernard Lawrence Madoff was born in Brooklyn on April 29, 1938, to Ralph and Sylvia (Muntner) Madoff, both the children of working-class immigrants from Eastern Europe.
伯纳德·劳伦斯·麦道夫(Bernard Lawrence Madoff)于1938年4月29日出生在布鲁克林，他的父亲拉尔夫(Ralph)和母亲西尔维娅(Sylvia)·麦道夫（婚前姓芒特纳[Muntner]）都是来自东欧的工薪阶层移民。
He grew up in Laurelton, at the southern edge of Queens. It was in Laurelton that he met and, in 1959 married, Ruth Alpern, whose father had a small but thriving accounting practice in Manhattan.
他在皇后区南部边缘的社区劳尔顿长大。在那里，他遇见了露丝·阿尔彭(Ruth Alpern)，两人在1959年结婚。阿尔彭的父亲在曼哈顿有一家规模不大但生意兴隆的会计事务所。
Before graduating from Hofstra University in 1960, he had already registered his own brokerage firm with the SEC, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, which he founded partly with money saved from summer lifeguard duty and a lawn-sprinkler installation business he had run in school.
1960年，在从霍夫斯特拉大学(Hofstra University)毕业之前，他就已经在SEC注册了自己的证券公司——伯纳德·L·麦道夫投资证券公司(Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities)。他读书时在暑假做救生员，并经营了自己的草坪洒水器安装生意，攒下的积蓄成为他日后创立公司时的部分资金来源。
After an uninspired year in law school, he devoted himself full-time to the business of trading over-the-counter stocks.
在法学院度过了平淡无奇的一年后，他全身心投入到了场外股票交易的业务当中。
After his brother, Peter, joined the Madoff firm in 1970, it began to build a reputation for harnessing cutting-edge computer technology. It was one of the early participants in the fledgling electronic market that ultimately became the modern Nasdaq and was involved as an investor in several other platforms for computerized trading.
1970年，弟弟彼得加入，麦道夫的公司也开始以利用尖端计算机技术而闻名。它是最终成为现代纳斯达克(Nasdaq)的新兴电子交易市场的早期参与者之一，并成为了数个计算机交易平台的投资者。
By the early 1960s, he had started accepting money raised for him by his father-in-law, Saul Alpern, and two young accountants who worked in the Alpern firm. At some point, the two accountants began to sustain this flow of Madoff-bound cash through the issuance of notes that they failed to register with the SEC, as required by law. The commission shut down that hidden money-management business in 1992, after Madoff had received almost $500 million from the accountants’ clients, who believed he was investing it for them.
到20世纪60年代初，他开始接受岳父索尔·阿尔彭(Saul Alpern)和阿尔彭家公司的两名年轻会计为他筹集的资金。后来，这两名会计开始靠发行票据来维持给麦道夫的现金流，他们并未按照法律规定在SEC登记这些票据。1992年，在麦道夫通过会计师客户获得近5亿美元资金后，SEC封停了这一隐蔽的资金管理业务，这些会计师客户还以为麦道夫在为他们进行投资。
Regulators filed civil charges against the two accountants, forcing them to shut down their note-sale operation, but failed to follow the money beyond Madoff’s doorstep.
监管机构对那两名会计提起了民事诉讼，迫使他们停止票据销售业务，但未能追踪到麦道夫家族之外的资金去向。
By then, hedge funds, pension plans and university endowments were entrusting hundreds of millions of dollars to Madoff — despite a business operation that was cloaked in secrecy and independent audits that were signed by a one-man firm in a suburban storefront office.
那时，各路对冲基金、养老金计划和大学捐赠基金已将数亿美元委托给了麦道夫，尽管其商业运作十分秘密，独立审计都是由一家位于郊区铺面办公室的单人公司签署的。
Financial scholars later theorized that Madoff’s Ponzi scheme lasted so long because it appealed more to his clients’ fear than to their greed: He promised them consistency in an increasingly volatile market, not eye-popping returns. And he always delivered.
后来，金融学者提出理论称，麦道夫的庞氏骗局之所以能持续这么长时间，是因为它更多是在迎合客户的恐惧而非贪婪：他向他们承诺，会在日益动荡的市场中保持稳定收益，而不是惊人的回报。而他总能完成目标。
Before being sentenced on June 29, 2009, he read from a statement he had prepared with his defense lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin.
在2009年6月29日被判刑之前，他宣读了和辩护律师艾拉·李·索尔金(Ira Lee Sorkin)准备的一份声明。
“I am responsible for a great deal of suffering and pain, I understand that,” he told the court. “I live in a tormented state now, knowing of all the pain and suffering that I have created. I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren.”
“我要为巨大的苦难和痛苦负责，我理解这一点，”他在法庭上说。“清楚自己制造了多少痛苦和苦难，我现在饱受折磨。正如我的一些受害者所指出的那样，我给我的家人和孙辈留下了耻辱的遗产。”
Madoff is survived by his wife, Ruth; his brother, Peter; his sister, Sondra M. Wiener; and several grandchildren.
麦道夫的身后人包括妻子露丝、弟弟彼得、姐姐桑德拉·M·维纳(Sondra M. Wiener)和几名孙辈。
