Hope his father now wonders was it all worth it, all his greed has finally taken one of his sons away and left a 2 year old without a father. What good is all that money now?
Son of disgraced financier Bernie Madoff found hanged in his New York apartment on second anniversary of his father's arrest
* Mark Madoff found hanged from a dog leash in his apartment
* Two-year-old son was sleeping in the next room
* Mark and brother Andrew were under investigation over Ponzi fraud
* Suicide comes just months after wife asked courts to change her name
* Lawyer: 'He succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure'
The son of jailed financier Bernie Madoff was found dead in New York today as his two-year-old son slept in the next room.
Mark Madoff, 46, was found hanging by a dog leash in his SoHo loft apartment on the second anniversary of his father's arrest.
His body was discovered by his father-in-law, Martin London, at 7.30am this morning.
Mr Madoff's wife Stephanie, who is in Florida with their other son, four, had raised the alarm after she received a series of disturbing emails from her husband.
Shamed family: Fraudster Bernie Madoff with his wife Ruth and son Mark at a dinner in Long Island in 2001. Mark was found dead at his apartment in Manhattan
Mark and his brother, Andrew, were under investigation but hadn't faced any criminal charges in the massive Ponzi scheme that led to their father's jailing.
'He was found hanged in his apartment. It was an apparent suicide,' a police spokesman Paul Browne said.
Mark Madoff's lawyer, Martin Flumenbaum, said: 'This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy.
'Mark was an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo.'
Tragedy: Officials carry the body of Bernie Madoff's 44-year-old son Mark out of his New York apartment today after he was found hanged
Police sources said that Mr Madoff's wife Stephanie became concerned about her husband after he sent an e-mail to her Friday night or early Saturday morning saying that someone should check on their son who was him in his apartment.
She then asked her father to check on the home, where he found Madoff's body.
The child was sleeping in a bedroom unharmed and a dog was also found in the apartment.
Bernie Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence after he was found guilty in June 2009 of swindling more than £45bn in the elaborate fraud.
Both Mark and Andrew had worked in senior positions for their father's securities firm since their twenties and supervised Madoff's stock-trading desks.
But it was a side of the firm not directly involved in the Ponzi scheme.
The 72-year-old former Wall St. genius was forced to sell his Manhattan and Florida homes as U.S. authorities seized all his assets.
His 67-year-old wife lives in Florida, where she carries out 'Meals on Wheels' charity work.
A year ago, the court-appointed trustee trying to unravel Madoff's financial affairs sued several relatives, including Peter - Bernard's brother, who played a prominent role in the family's company - Mark and Andrew, accusing them of failing to detect the fraud while living lavish lifestyles financed with the family's ill-gotten fortune.
The lawsuit accused Mark Madoff of using $66m he received improperly to buy luxury homes in New York City, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
In February, Mark Madoff's wife petitioned a court to change her last name and the last names of her children, saying her family had received threats and was humiliated by the scandal.
On 11 December 2008, Madoff summoned his sons to his New York penthouse flat to tell them his investment business was 'one big lie'.
They were devastated. Andrew lay crying on the floor of the kitchen and Mark reacted in fury.
Friends told Vanity Fair magazine that Andrew condemned his father’s ‘biblical’ betrayal. His wife, Deborah, reportedly filed for divorce on the day of her father-in-law’s arrest.
Mark Madoff: He was furious with his father and obsessed with the scandal
One former Madoff employee, named only as Deborah, said the sons ‘wouldn’t have been able to do what Bernie did: they just didn’t have the evilness in them.’
But she added: ‘If I were to say that Mark and Andy are innocent, I’d get people looking at me like I’m absolutely nuts.’
Mark was said to be obsessed by the scandal, poring endlessly over newspaper and Internet reports.
Twenty-four hours after his father told him what he had done, Mark was said to have missed the office Christmas party and gone home to lay on his bed, fully clothed, without moving for four hours.
After the initial furore died down, he tried unsuccessfully to get a job in trading before starting his own company making applications for iPads.
But the scandal would not go away. Mark recently had been using an email address that does not include his first or last name.
Jailed: Bernard Madoff, left, who is serving a 150-year jail term for fraud over a £45bn Ponzi scheme, and his other son Andrew, who is under investigation
According to the Wall Street Journal, he and his wife Stephanie bought a $6.5m home in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 2008. It is currently for sale.
One of Andrew’s friends, Alexandra Lebenthal, told the magazine that his mood brightened after his father was sent to jail.
‘That was meaningful for him in terms of getting to the next level,’ she said.
She added that Andrew's priority was to make his daughters understand that ‘just because their grandfather turned out to be one of the worst criminals ever didn't mean they’re bad people.’
He told friends when his father was jailed that he couldn’t find it in his heart to take pity him.
The magazine claimed the sons cold-shouldered their mother because they believed her tendency to side with her husband, no matter what, enabled his pyramid scheme fraud to succeed for so long.
Madoff wrote to his sons from jail and sent them a gift of a vintage Paul Neman Rolex Daytona, a Piaget and a Cartier Tank watch.
He wrote:‘Dear Mark and Andy, If you can bear to keep these watches, they are given with my love. If not, give them to someone who might. Love, Dad.’
A trader who was friends with the family said Madoff considered his sons ‘soft’ because he had worked to make his fortune while they had been given everything on a plate.
‘Mark and Andy had never gone against him. They were always trying to please him, and never could,’ he told Vanity Fair.
Mark's death is not the first following the fraud scandal. A billionaire associate of Madoff was found dead at his Florida mansion.
Jeffry Picower was discovered at the bottom of his swimming pool in Palm Beach - a seaside playground for America's rich and famous.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...offs-son-Mark-dead-suicide.html#ixzz17pcGUfwg
