It’s always fascinating to watch these sorts of documentaries and understand the other side of the coin of life of being able to have millions and millions in the bank and still for it not to be enough. To be able to scam people for years and completely change and ruin people’s lives all because of your own greed. It’s a world I cannot imagine living in and it seems so dark and scary that you never know when it’s going to come to an end.

Bernie Madoff is known as a Wall Street mogul, he was a man who ruled Wall Street, he made millions in his company but beneath it – literally a couple of floors below – a dark underbelly lived where corruption was rife, and despite Bernie already having an above board company that wasn’t enough and he used his second company as a place for scams, lies and treachery.

Madoff was always known when he first started working as an incredible boss who would take his workers on vacations with his family and pay for expensive things and just seemed like a top guy, a wonderful man who had a dream and ambition and was doing his best to make sure that others rose up alongside him, but that wasn’t all there was to the story. It’s fascinating to be able to look at a crime that happened over decades and could have easily been stopped earlier on if Bernie wasn’t in the position he was and wasn’t as powerful as he came across to be.

This documentary explores Madoff from his early years and his parents failings and businesses, to him becoming this business mogul that his father always wanted to be. A billionaire with millions in the bank and a company that others aspired to own one day. He was a man that didn’t seem to have an off button, a man that just kept going and so for it to all come crumbling down around him and to end up in jail for all he has done was such an interesting watch.

But for me I think the most fascinating part of this whole story was his family, the fact that he never allowed his sons to enter the world of his underground schemes and seemed to be completely blindsided by what their father was really doing, and then the fall out of the family once Madoff was in prison. With one son dying tragically and another taking his own life and then his own wife losing not only her husband but her sons in the process and then everything else when it was taken by the government. To go from living on the top of the world to living out of your car just because of something your husband did, that she seemed to have no knowledge of, is an absolutely terrifying thought. Anyone could have that power over you and at any minute your whole world that you thought you knew could come crashing down.

It’s an absolutely incredible documentary and while I’m interested in the finance world and what this could mean for someone who’s rather average, it’s always nice to look back and think about what we have come from and how these people in power can make these callus decisions that can change thousands of lives. To think there are people with this amount of power that they can get away with anything for so long and even be praised for their contributions to the finance world before it all comes crashing down is so shocking to think about. And now we know exactly what happened it’s just a waiting game to see if and when it will happen again.

What do you think of Bernie Madoff?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding