Kevin Bacon fell victim to losing a fortune to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme that was running in the 90s.
The sixty-four-year-old actor opened up about the failed investment and how he and his wife almost lost everything.
Keep reading to find out more…
Bernie Lawrence Madoff was an American fraudster and financier.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has confirmed that he passed April last year while in custody at a federal facility in North Carolina.
Madoff was serving a 150-year sentence following his 2009 criminal case and subsequent conviction.
The controversial figure’s passing brought a lot of mixed reactions.
He famously ran an extensive Ponzi scheme swindling investors out of billions of dollars over many years.
It’s believed he died from kidney failure.
In late 2008, the Madoff investment scandal was a major case of stock and securities.
Madoff, who was an American financier, executed the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
He defrauded thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars over the course of at least seventeen years.
Some believe he may have kept the fraud up for longer.
As well as being a financier, he was also a pioneer in electronic trading and chair of the Nasdaq in the early 1990s.
Madoff was born in Brooklyn, on April 29, 1938, to Ralph and Sylvia Madoff.
His father used to work as a plumber before entering the financial business with his wife.
They founded Gibraltar Securities, which was ultimately forced to close by the SEC.
By the time Madoff was twenty-two, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Hofstra University in 1960.
He also attended law school at Brooklyn Law School. But it was only a brief short of time.
While in college, Madoff married his high school girlfriend, Ruth.
The same year he got his degree, he later founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.
He traded penny stocks with $5,000 he earned installing sprinklers and working as a lifeguard when he started his business.
But as he was growing confident with his company…
He started to persuade family, friends, and others to invest with him.
Throughout his business, Madoff had some notable accomplishments.
The success came when he and his brother began to build electronic trading capabilities.
Or ‘artificial intelligence’ as Madoff called it.
It attracted massive order flow and boosted the business by providing insights into market activity.
“I had all these major banks coming down, entertaining me,” Madoff said in an interview with journalist, Steve Fishman.
His scandal, scheme, and crime…
At some point, Madoff attracted investors by claiming to generate large, steady returns through an investing strategy called ‘split-strike conversion’, a legitimate trading strategy.
However, Madoff deposited client funds into a single bank account that he used to pay existing clients who wanted to cash out.
On December 10, 2008, he confessed his mistakes to his sons.
The following day, they turned him over to the authorities.
Madoff remained adamant that his sons were not aware of his scheme.
After being sentenced to prison…
Madoff was ordered to pay back $170 billion of investors’ money.
His assets, such as real estate, his yachts, and jewelry, were seized and sold to make up that money.
Many people fell victim to the scandal.
And one of them was none other than Kevin Bacon.
During an appearance on the SmartLess podcast with hosts, Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes…
The actor admitted that he almost lost everything when the scandal was brought down.
“We had most of our money in Madoff,” Bacon said.
“There’s obvious life lessons there — if something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.”
Neither Bacon nor his wife disclosed exactly how much money they lost to Madoff.
However, it was reported that they regained “a portion” of their losses.
While Bacon and his family may still be feeling the effects of their loss, the actor said that he and his wife haven’t lost their sense of optimism.
“When something like that happens, you look at each other and you go, ‘Well, that sucks and let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.’
“We’ve made it this far, our kids are healthy, we’re healthy, you know? Let’s look at what we have that’s good. We can still both work,” he said.
Bacon added:Â “I think people will not be happy to hear me whining about money.”
What do you think?