Ruth Madoff

Ruth Madoff (née Alpern; born May 18, 1941) is the wife of Bernie Madoff, the convicted American financial fraudster. She was director of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.

Early life

Madoff was born in Queens, New York and raised in Laurelton, to a practicing Jewish family. She has one sister, Joan (Alpern) Roman. She is a graduate of Far Rockaway High School and a 1961 graduate of Queens College. In 1992, Madoff graduated from New York University with a Master of Science degree in Nutrition.

Personal life

On November 28, 1959, at age 18, she married Bernard "Bernie" Madoff, whom she had met while attending Far Rockaway High School. She worked for some time as her husband's bookkeeper.

Bernard and Ruth Madoff had two sons: Mark (March 11, 1964 – December 11, 2010; suicide), a 1986 graduate of the University of Michigan, and Andrew (April 8, 1966 – September 3, 2014; lymphoma), a 1988 graduate of University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School.

On the morning of December 11, 2010 — exactly two years after his father's arrest — Mark was found dead in his New York City apartment. The city medical examiner ruled the cause of death as suicide by hanging.

According to a March 13, 2009, filing by Madoff, he and his wife were worth up to $138 million, plus an estimated $700 million for the value of his business interest in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. Other major assets included securities ($45 million), cash ($17 million), half-interest in BLM Air Charter ($12 million), a 2006 Leopard yacht ($7 million), jewelry ($2.6 million), Manhattan apartment ($7 million), Montauk home ($3 million), Palm Beach home ($11 million), Cap d' Antibes, France property ($1 million), and furniture, household goods, and art ($9.9 million).

A Vanity Fair article in 2009 stated that during the time when she was a bookkeeper, Ruth made an undisclosed US$2.5 million deal and that employees in the London office stated that "Ruthie runs all the books". During a 2011 interview on CBS, Ruth stated that she and her husband had attempted suicide after his fraud was exposed, both taking "a bunch of pills" in a suicide pact on Christmas Eve 2008.

Since her husband’s incarceration, most of the Madoff assets have been seized by the government, including the couple's Upper East Side penthouse in New York. She moved to one of her son Andrew's houses in Connecticut after spending two years living in Boca Raton, Florida with her sister, Joan Roman. Both of her sons have predeceased her: Mark by suicide in 2010, and Andrew from lymphoma in 2014.

In Brian Ross's book, "The Madoff Chronicles", he states that a Madoff Securities employee nicknamed "Little Rick" would go up to Spanish Harlem to score cocaine for the brokers/traders and also marijuana for Ruth Madoff.

In the media

• Cate Blanchett used Ruth Madoff as inspiration for her Oscar-winning performance in Blue Jasmine.
• Michelle Pfeiffer is set to play Ruth Madoff in the HBO film The Wizard of Lies which is based on Diana B. Henriques's best-selling book. Robert De Niro is set to star as Bernie.
• Blythe Danner portrayed her in the 2016 ABC miniseries Madoff with Richard Dreyfuss as Bernie.