Bernie Madoff is currently serving a 150-year sentence for committing fraud in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history, according to CNN. In 2008, his sons Mark and Andrew Madoff were the ones who turned Bernie into authorities when they discovered the true nature of his decades-long scheme, according to CBS News. "We knew that we couldn't live with this information and not do something about it," Andrew told 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer, according to CBS News. Now that ABC has decided to explore Bernie’s rise and fall in the miniseries Madoff, viewers might be wondering about the real people involved in the scandal. Bernie is still in jail, but what about the other members of his family? Specifically, what happened to his son Andrew after Bernie's arrest and sentencing?
According to the New York Times, Andrew graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1988 and jumped right into his father’s business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. Andrew handled the trading side of things with his brother, Mark, while Bernie dealt with the very secretive money managing operation on another floor. When Mark and Andrew caught wind of the real goings on of the company, they made the decision to turn in their own father, according to People. "We never hesitated," Andrew told the magazine in 2013. "The decision was at the same time the easiest decision I ever had to make and the hardest."
Still, the decision splintered his family, with Andrew severing contact with his father after Bernie's arrest in 2008, according to New York Magazine. And, Andrew told People magazine in the aforementioned article, "I will never forgive [Bernie] for what he did ... He's already dead to me."
Not only did Andrew cease contact with his father, but his own family split apart with Andrew’s wife, Deborah West, filing for divorce on the same day that Bernie was arrested in 2008, according to The Daily Mail.
In a sad end to the saga, Vanity Fair reported that Andrew passed away in 2014 from lymphoma at the age of 48. The aforementioned New York Times article reported that Andrew was survived by two daughters from his first marriage, his parents, and his fiancée, Catherine Hooper.
Images: Patrick Harbron/ABC
