Madoff Names Names Again, And Carl Shapiro Calls Him A Liar

Bernie Madoff is naming names again. But the only living person he is trying to implicate says the disgraced former financier is a liar.

In an interview from jail Thursday with Fox Business Network’s Adam Shapiro, convicted Ponzi schemer Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence at a federal prison in Butner, N.C., said clients Norman Levy, Jeffry Picower, Stanley Chais and Carl Shapiro all knew he was cheating billions of dollars out of thousands of clients over decades.

Shapiro, one of the earliest investors in Madoff’s scheme, is the only one of the four who's still alive. The 100-year-old philanthropist denied any knowledge of the scheme and, through his attorney, called Madoff a “liar” and a “thief.”

“Carl Shapiro was as shocked as everyone else when Mr. Madoff confessed to running a Ponzi scheme,” Stephen Fishbein, a Manhattan attorney, said in a statement to the International Business Times. “This after-the-fact statement by an admitted liar and convicted thief deserves to be given no credibility whatsoever.”

Madoff also claimed that JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) failed to report any suspicious activity on his account and that the Treasury Department’s inspector general was in contact with him about his accounts at the bank. “There is no question that JPMorgan is guilty,” Madoff told the Fox reporter.

“JPMorgan did not know about or in any way become a party to the fraud orchestrated by Bernard Madoff,” Jennifer Zuccarelli, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan, said in an email. "I’m not going to comment on Bernie Madoff being a spokesman for the U.S. government."

Madoff also talked about his family, which was shredded by the scandal. “The only thing I did right was not make them a part of this,” Madoff said.

Apparently he forgot two major members of his clan. His brother, Peter, who served as the senior managing director and chief compliance officer at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. And his son Mark committed suicide by hanging himself exactly two years after his father’s arrest.