Madoff victim reveals they had an affair

An accountant who has publicly blamed imprisoned con man Bernard Madoff for stealing her family's savings has written a book that will disclose a secret she previously withheld - they once had an extramarital affair.

Sheryl Weinstein's account, Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me, will be published in the US on August 25 by St Martin's Press.

Weinstein, 60, has denounced Madoff publicly at least four times this year, including at the June 29 court hearing where he was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison for masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Weinstein told the judge she met Madoff 21 years ago when she was chief financial officer at Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organisation of America.

"I now view that day as perhaps the unluckiest day of my life because of the many events set into motion that would eventually have the most profound and devastating effect on me, my husband, my child, my parents, my in-laws and all of those who depended on us," Weinstein said at the New York hearing.

In addition to details of the affair, the hardcover book will include photographs and some intimate descriptions of Madoff, Murphy said. He declined to provide an advance copy of the book, which he said was "a fast read' that will run about 200 pages and was ghostwritten.

Madoff, 71, was arrested December 11 and pleaded guilty in March to running a US$65 billion ($96.6 billion) Ponzi scheme that paid early clients with money from new investors. At the sentencing, Weinstein was the last of nine victims to address US District Judge Denny Chin.

Weinstein and her husband of 37 years, Ronald, were forced to sell their Manhattan home on the Upper East Side a week earlier because they had "lost everything", she told the judge.

Weinstein did not immediately return a call or email seeking comment.

"She's entitled to her free speech, I suppose," said Ira Sorkin, a lawyer for Bernard Madoff.

"Why one would go public with something like that, I don't know. She's entitled to say anything that might be deemed derogatory about herself."

Weinstein said: "For months after December 11, I would wake in the dark hours of the night and early morning and to my horror realise that there were no calming, soothing words I could say to myself because it wasn't a dream. The monster who visited me was true, a reality."

Her days were filled, she said, with a "deep, heavy depression", and the sight of food left her "sick, unable to escape the reality of my personal devastation. At times I could not even bear to be alone."

Weinstein said Madoff knew her husband and their son Eric, who spent a summer working for Madoff during college. Her son later invested his money with the firm, she said.

"Eric would continue to call him over the years to ask for his advice and input," Weinstein told the judge.

Weinstein spoke several times to the media this year about Madoff without detailing their personal relationship.

On the night before Madoff's March 12 guilty plea, she joined 20 victims on Fox Business Network.

She said she met Madoff when a donor gave US$7 million to Hadassah and directed Madoff to manage the money. After a few months, she said, Hadassah began to invest its own money with Madoff and "it did very well".

In December, Hadassah said in a "Dear Friends" letter that a French donor had given US$7 million in 1988, specifying that the money "remain with Bernard Madoff, where it was then invested".

Over the next decade, Hadassah put in another US$33 million, raising its total investment to US$40 million by 1997, when it stopped adding principal.

Since Madoff went to prison, life has gotten harder for his wife, Ruth. The trustee liquidating his business sued her for US$44.8 million, saying she was "massively enriched" by her husband's Ponzi scheme.

Federal authorities seized their homes in Manhattan and Montauk, New York.

A bankruptcy judge also ruled August 3 that she can't spend more than US$100 on herself without telling the trustee.

At the sentencing hearing, Weinstein, who is a certified public accountant, urged the judge to keep Madoff "in a cage behind bars" for his crimes.

"He is a beast that has stolen for his own needs the livelihoods, savings, lives, hopes and dreams and futures of others," she said.

- BLOOMBERG