Name: ______

How Bernie Madoff Did It – The Wizard of Lies Article

1. Determine the central idea in the first paragraph of “How Bernard Madoff Did It.”

2. According to Ahamed what makes the Madoff scandal different from others?

3. What does Ahamed mean by “others found a certain voyeuristic pleasure in the financial travails of

the rich and famous”?

**Voyeuristic:having the quality of being an obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects. The term for taking pleasure in other people’s suffering is called schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is a German term that literally means “harm-joy.” This is a term that applies to the Madoff scandal as well as Oedipus the King and is an important idea that connects the texts in this module.

4. What might travails mean in this context?

5. Why was the public “morbidly fascinated” by the Madoff scandal?

Reread paragraphs 2 and 3 of the text (from “Finally the man himself and his family” through “feeder funds that channeled assets his way”) and annotate using the code CI to note the development of a central idea in the text.

6. How does Ahamed refine his idea that the Madoff scandal grabbed public attention?

7. What might Ahamed mean by “Sophoclean family tragedy” in reference to the Madoff scandal?

Reread paragraph 4 in “How Bernard Madoff Did It,” from “At some point (no one is quite certain when)” through “the classic Ponzi scheme.”

8. What was the reason Madoff “fudged the numbers”?

9. Why did Madoff stop “even bothering to invest the cash”?

Paragraph 5

10. How is Henriques able to add “significant detail to the story”?

Paragraph 6

11. What does Potemkin-like mean?

Paragraph 7

12. Explain how Madoff’s actions would require a writer like Henriques to be knowledgeable about “the mechanics of the fraud.”

13. What can threaten the viability of a Ponzi scheme?

14. What circumstances lead to the scheme being “on the verge of breaking down”?

15. Why did Madoff constantly need to find “a new source of money”?

16. Identify a central idea that emerges and develops in this portion of the article thus far.

Paragraph 8

17. What were the “danger signals”? Explain in your own words what Ahamed is saying using the

examples given.

18. What was not “plausible” about the returns Madoff was making?

19. Why did Madoff’s investors not act on their suspicions?

Paragraph 9

20. What is the “human dimension” of the Madoff story?

21. How does Henriques’ account of the “harrowing scene” reinforce her claim that the family did not

know about the Ponzi scheme?

Paragraph 10

22. How does Ahamed support his claim, “A Ponzi scheme is the opposite of a perfect crime”?

23. Why will the numbers always become “unsustainable” over time?

24. When did Madoff realize “the jig [was] up”?

25. What does Ahamed mean when he writes that Madoff was the “embodiment of our infinite capacity

for self-delusion”? Who is “our” in this quote?

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