© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Madoff Says Banks 'Had To Know' About His Fraud; Should We Believe Him?

Bernard Madoff walks out of federal court in New York City after a bail hearing Jan. 5, 2009.
Hiroko Masuike
/
Getty Images
Bernard Madoff walks out of federal court in New York City after a bail hearing Jan. 5, 2009.

Bernard Madoff, mastermind of perhaps the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, has now told The New York Times that the banks and hedge funds he dealt with over the years as he got away with billions of dollars that he was supposed to be investing for clients "had to know" what was happening.

"But the attitude was sort of, 'If you're doing something wrong, we don't want to know,' " he said during a jail house interview with the Times.

Given Madoff's track record on telling the truth, we wonder:

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.