In 2008, the largest financial fraud in U.S. history rocked Wall Street when it was revealed that Bernie Madoff’s investment company was operating more like a Ponzi scheme than a legitimate business. Dozens of investors lost millions of dollars on deals, and many were forced to file a class-action lawsuit against Madoff to stay afloat. But for others, it seems that the scheme’s effects were long lasting, and on Monday, another investor burned by Madoff’s Ponzi scheme took his life
Charles Murphy, 56, whose Fairfield Greenwich hedge fund lost more than $7 billion to Madoff, jumped off the 24th floor of a luxury Manhattan hotel at around 5:00pm, which left many New Yorkers to witness a gruesome scene.
Murphy was one of many to lose his job over the Madoff scheme and was a defendant in the 80 million dollar class-action lawsuit against Madoff. Following the scandal, Murphy tried to soften the blow by attempting to selling a $37 million dollar home he had purchased a year earlier, but he eventually found work with Paulson & Co.
It is unclear what extended effects the Ponzi scheme had on Murphy since the following first few years of the scandal, but according to the New York Post, Murphy’s wife crashed their Honda last year and was unable to pay for the damages.
Murphy is one of three people that have been burned by the Ponzi scheme and committed suicide. In 2008 Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, founder of a firm that lost $1.4 billion to Madoff’s scheme, killed himself in his Manhattan office. In 2010, Madoff’s son committed suicide in his Soho Apartment.
(via New York Post and New York Daily News)