Madoff victim speaks up

Alexandra Penney is an artist, best-selling author, former editor-in-chief of Self magazine - and now one of the many investors around the globe who got snookered. She tells her story in the Daily Beast:

Last Thursday at around 5 p.m., I had just checked on a rising cheese soufflé in my oven when my best friend called. "Heard Madoff's been arrested,” she said. “I hope it's a rumor. Doesn't he handle most of your money?” Indeed, he did. More than a decade ago, when I was in my late 40s, I handed over my life savings to Madoff’s firm. It was money I’d been tucking away since I was 16-years-old, when I began working summers in Lord & Taylor, earning about $65 a week. Not a penny was inherited. Not one cent was from my divorce. I earned all of it myself, through a long string of jobs that included working as a cashier at Rosedale fish market in New York City in my twenties, and later, writing bestselling sex books. When I hung up with my friend, I turned on the TV, and began to scour Google for news until the message became nauseatingly clear: Forty years of savings—the money I’d counted on to take me comfortably through the next thirty years—had likely evaporated in Madoff’s scheme. THAT MOTHERFUCKER!! The soufflé fell.

[CUT]

I began to think about my options: I’d have to sell the cottage in West Palm Beach immediately. I’d need to lay off Yolanda. I could cancel the newspaper subscriptions and read everything online. I only needed a cellphone. I’d have to stop taking taxis. And who could highlight my hair for almost no money? And how hard was it to give yourself a really good pedicure? Then, there is my jewelry. I’ve always collected nice watches and pearls. In the back of my mind I’d think “buy good stuff because if you're ever a bag lady, you can sell it.” It might have been a rationalization then—but here I am now: the nightmare may be coming true. Before I reached for a bedtime Tylenol PM that night, I Googled the Hemlock society. I wanted to know a painless way to die. Would you believe the Hemlock society no longer exists?

The latest: A federal judge ordered that Madoff be placed under home detention and electronic monitoring. Also, his wife Ruth has to surrender her passport. From the NYT:

In the order, the judge also modified the bail so that Mr. Madoff would not need two additional signatures to guarantee the bond, as initially required. Only his wife and his brother Peter, who worked at Mr. Madoff’s firm, had signed the guarantee as of Wednesday morning. His two sons, Mark and Andrew, had refused to sign, according to court papers. Under the new bail package, Mr. Madoff and his wife agree to surrender their houses in Montauk, N.Y. and Palm Beach, Fla., if he flees in exchange for reducing the number of co-signers on his bail from four to two. He also agreed to a curfew of 7 p.m. through 9 a.m.

Beyond pathetic.