Millionaire widow becomes cleaner after losing fortune in Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme
A millionaire widow who lost her fortune to Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme has turned to cleaning and care work to make ends meet.
By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles Last Updated: 5:09PM GMT 23 Jan 2009
But after Mr Madoff's alleged confession that the scheme was 'all just one big lie', a revelation that shook the investment world, Mrs Ebel realised she had nothing Photo: GETTY
Maureen Ebel, 60, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, thought she had $7.3 million invested with the New York financier when he was arrested last month and charged with running a massive hedge fun scam, possibly the largest financial fraud in history.
But after Mr Madoff's alleged confession that the scheme was "all just one big lie", a revelation that shook the investment world, Mrs Ebel realised she had nothing.
She went from an annual income from her investments of 400,000 dollars to worrying about how to pay her next bill and picking up coins in the street.
In less than a week following Madoff's arrest, Mrs Ebel found a job caring for a 93-year-old woman, cleaning her home and ironing.
"This is my fate," the retired nurse, whose doctor husband died in 2000 aged 53, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I was married, had a fabulous marriage to a man I loved and worshipped, a physician. We travelled. We had a very fine life. And he's dead. He died, and every penny I had in the world has gone."
Mrs Ebel, one of hundreds if not thousands of investors who together lost tens of billions of dollars in the scheme, has raised some cash by selling off jewellery and a painting and returned thousands of dollars worth of items recently bought on credit cards.
She is now desperately trying to offload her two-bedroom holiday home near West Palm Beach, Florida, and Lexus SUV while calculating that to afford her mortgage, she must return to nursing and take in a lodger.
Mrs Ebel's uncle Leonard, 80, introduced her to Madoff's fund after her husband's death.
"At that time, when he got me into Madoff, he had been a Madoff investor for 25 years," she told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "And now he's a Madoff investor and broke after 30 years."
She initially invested 4.5 million dollars and received detailed monthly statements and a cheque four times a year. She has registered with the FBI as a victim of Madoff's scheme.
Now when she visits Florida she says she feels "like an alien".
"Everyone is going riding their horses and playing tennis, playing golf," Mrs Ebel said. "If there's a nickel on the street, I'm picking it up."
Comment:
This story illustrates the importance of acquiring investment knowledge early in life. These riches to rags stories provide many learning points too.
