Madoff Family Member Shopping Around Tell-All Book

By Nathan Burstein April 29, 2011

Perhaps it was inevitable that someone in the Madoff clan would eventually write a tell-all.

If she gets her way, that family member will be Stephanie Morgan, the former daughter-in-law of Bernie and Ruth Madoff. New York magazine reports that Morgan is currently shopping a memoir to publishers, promising a story that portrays her as “strong-minded woman overcoming tragedy and moving ahead with life.”

The Shmooze didn’t initially like the idea of a Madoff family member profiting from Bernie’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which ruined many lives and did massive damage to numerous charities. But Morgan is at least partly a victim herself, since her husband, Mark Madoff, killed himself in December — a suicide allegedly caused by shame over his father’s crimes.

Anonymous Madoff family members have expressed concern over the book proposal, fearing it could harm the family, including Morgan and Mark Madoff’s own kids. Those same unnamed family members claim Morgan wasn’t close with the family, so she couldn’t have had much access to secrets.

While the public remains highly suspicious of the Madoff clan, Bernie remains the only family member to have been convicted of a crime. (The main trouble currently facing his brother and business partner, Peter, is selling his multimillion-dollar Florida home.)

This week saw the release of another book about Bernie Madoff, this one by New York Times financial reporter Diana Henriques. That said, our favorite Madoff-inspired product remains “Bernie in Hell” hot sauce.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO