Ruth Madoff is an American businesswoman who is most known as the wife of Bernie Madoff, a convicted financial scammer. Ruth was the director of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities prior to his enormous fraud being discovered. Bernie Madoff died in prison on April 14, 2021, aged 82.
Ruth Madoff was played by Blythe Danner in the 2016 TV miniseries “Madoff” and Michelle Pfeiffer in the 2017 HBO film “The Wizard of Lies”. Cate Blanchett drew inspiration from Madoff for her Oscar-winning role in “Blue Jasmine”.
What is Ruth Madoff’s net worth?
According to a court document from March 2009, Bernie and Ruth Madoff‘s net wealth at the time of his arrest was just under $1 billion. That net worth included $138 million in cash, real estate, and securities, as well as nearly $700 million in the value of Bernie’s stake in his investing firm. Prior to the deception, they possessed a $7 million Manhattan apartment, a $8 million home in The Hamptons, a $11 million Palm Beach estate, and a $1 million property in France. Following his conviction, all of their properties were sold at auction to pay off debts and clawbacks.
The US government allowed her to keep $2.5 million of her and Bernie’s old fortune.
What assets does Ruth Madoff own?
Following her husband’s arrest, the authorities seized the majority of the Madoff family’s assets, including the couple’s Upper East Side penthouse in New York.
In June 2009, soon before Bernie Madoff was imprisoned, prosecutors secured a compromise that allowed Ruth Madoff to keep $2.5 million while seizing and selling the Madoffs’ other assets. Others, such as the court-appointed trustee Irving Picard of BakerHostetler, who was liquidating her husband’s firm, could still attempt to recover funds from her, for example as an unlawful transferee of funds given to her, under the terms of the settlement.
Bernie Madoff’s lawyer had urged the authorities to let his wife keep $70 million in assets in her name while he relinquished all rights to $170 million.
Ruth Madoff, 77, agreed in May 2019 to pay $594,000 ($250,000 in cash and $344,000 in trusts for two of her grandkids) and surrender her remaining assets when she dies to resolve claims filed by the court-appointed trustee Picard, who is liquidating her husband’s firm for former clients. Picard sued Ruth Madoff for $44.8 million, claiming she had lived a “life of splendor” thanks to her husband’s scam, but settled for less due to her low assets.
Picard claimed that the compensation was not evidence that she knew about or engaged in the deception. She is supposed to send reports to Picard about her spending on a regular basis, as well as any purchase exceeding $100, to guarantee she has no hidden bank accounts.
Madoff relocated to one of her son Andrew’s homes in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, in 2012, following a two-year stay with her sister in Boca Raton. Ruth moved to a modest condo development in Old Greenwich after Andrew died in 2014, where she lived in a one-bedroom apartment. She has been living with Susan Elkin, her former daughter-in-law from Mark Madoff’s first marriage, in a $4.4 million oceanfront villa in Old Greenwich since September 2020.
