Posted on 01/23/2009 9:43:42 AM PST by marshmallow
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
People it is called diversifying your investments, look it up.
And it doesn’t look like she had unrealistic financial goals for this money. She was making 5.5% on her money, which is more than a CD but hardly too good to be true.
Should have spread that money around.
I can’t muster any sympathy for the rich, except that it’s a shame she didn’t spend that wealth she had before she lost it to help those less fortunate.
She didn’t make good financial decisions about where to keep the nest egg, but within a week she had a job. I admire this woman.
If you’re cleaned out, I guess you DO become cleaner.
Why ? It was HER money. She and her husband earned it, and in the process paid taxes, some of which were used to help the “less fortunate”.
What a private person does with their own money is THEIR business, not anyone elses. . .
With the struggle that we’re in, are we to fill sorry for some former wealthy beyond dreams woman that lived high and mighty and is now on the same level that we average people are? Nah, don’t have any sympathy left.
She obviously did not consult the Bible when making investments. King Solomon had a lot to say about money.
He should be made to trade places with that woman.
The story says she cleans offices but she is a registered nurse who was married to a doctor? It is sad but she is only 53 years old and RNs get paid well. RNs earn their money but she should be able to get a decent job as an RN.
And looking upthread, I see that marxist class-hatred is alive and well on FR.
Disgusting.
raised some cash by selling off jewellery and a painting and returned thousands of dollars worth of items recently bought on credit cards.
A high maintenance women at the end of the tunnel, where she found no light.
I'm not talking about paying taxes. Part of the reason she's so upset over this is because she can't live the pampered life she once had, and she feels like an "alien" (her word) in FL among the other rich people she knows. If she'd lived more modestly (especially after her husband died) and not been so class conscious, she'd not be so devastated personally. She'd have looked at the money as a blessing that had an expiration date. She could have spent all the excess doing God's work. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." This woman was a fool.
However, it is her business. I agree. That's why I don't actually care about her plight.
We should withhold judgment until we determine how many illegal aliens worked for the family.
Just... wow.
I feel sorry for her. She got lousy investment advice, not something everyone is an expert on. She’s also a widow now. But she’s dusting herself off and found a job. I hope she has other family in the area that can help her out.
Ditto.
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