Now he wants to talk

Bernie Madoff is spilling his guts. Unfortunately it's not because someone sliced him open like a taun-taun and needs to use his body husk to warm something. No he's getting loquacious about how he stole all that money. Let me see if I can figure out his brilliant scheme: take people's money, take more people's money, tell them you're totally making them rich, take more people's money, meet with SEC and tell them everything's copacetic, take more people's money, and then watch it all crash down as your easily disprovable scheme is thwarted by someone paying attention. Is that about right?

A lawyer for victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme says the financier told him during a 4 1/2-hour prison interview plenty of details about the fraud, including how it took place and how securities regulators missed catching him.
...
Nancy Fineman, a lawyer who works with Cotchett and attended the interview, said Madoff described his meetings with the Securities and Exchange Commission while he was committing the fraud and the fact the SEC was unable to catch him, which didn't seem to surprise him.

Authorities say Madoff cost thousands of investors over several decades at least $13 billion as he told them the money had grown to about $65 billion.

See, all you have to do to be taken seriously on Wall Street is to declaratively state you have made a ton of money and then hope you said it forcefully enough that no one will ever say "prove it." If you want to deceive the SEC all you have to do is hope that they're lazy enough to never actually spend two consecutive seconds looking at your house of cards, even if they have respected investors openly telling them you're running a scam. I do like the notion that Madoff's Ponzi scheme was different than all the other Ponzi schemes and that he is needed to unravel the mystery inside a riddle wrapped up in an enigma that is taking the money of suckers and paying returns out of the money taken from other suckers.

I did like this quote:

"I think he's not happy to be where he is, but he's certainly not complaining," the lawyer said. "The guy's facing 150 years. That's a long time for anybody."

I wouldn't worry, I don't think there's any possibility Bernie will end up having to do the full 150.