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Millionaire Widow Becomes Cleaner After Losing Fortune in Madoff's Alleged Ponzi Scheme
Daily Telegraph (UK) ^ | 1/23/09 | Catherine Elsworth

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: madoff; sobstory
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To: Citizen Blade

That’s akin to taking a loan out on your house to buy stock. That’s just very poor risk management.


61 posted on 01/23/2009 2:06:36 PM PST by SoDak (Molon Labe)
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To: dangerdoc
First you complained that she didn’t give her money away and now you complain that she didn’t spend her money paying down her mortgage. Would you actually feel sorry for her if she had a big house paid off, I think not.

No, living modestly would mean moving to a less expensive home. She could have bought a $200K house with cash from selling her home when her husband died and she wouldn't have a mortgage right now.

62 posted on 01/23/2009 2:51:11 PM PST by GraniteStateConservative (...He had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here...-- Worst.President.Ever.)
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To: cydcharisse

For a long time I had all my money with an investment company called SEI. It was recommended by my broker. It didn’t seem like a big deal, because it was spread in so many different funds. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t too bright. The good news is that nothing went wrong and now I do things differently.

The point is that when you invest money, you assume that there is oversight. I’m sorry, but that’s true. I don’t think it’s up to the individual investor to make sure that all the documents that the government requires to license these people are correct. There will be so many people found to be negligent on this, but I think the least culpable was someone like this woman.


63 posted on 01/23/2009 3:26:18 PM PST by Hildy
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To: rusureitflies?

What are you talking about? She invested it with a reputable company. one that continued to be licensed by the government. She wasn’t getting crazy returns either. If you can’t muster ANY sypathy for her, you are heartless.


64 posted on 01/23/2009 3:29:24 PM PST by Hildy
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To: MarineBrat

It’s unbelievable how much class envy there is on this conservative website.


65 posted on 01/23/2009 3:32:06 PM PST by Hildy
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To: marshmallow

No envy here, but you wonder how all these people, all or most of them Jewish, as far as we know, all of them wealthy and supposedly very smart, all of them misjudged Bernie, and then who else have they misjudged? The one, they, or 75% of them, have just voted into the White House perhaps?


66 posted on 01/23/2009 3:39:02 PM PST by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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To: marshmallow

In other news, SEC, the same agency that let Bernie get away with it all these years, is on their toes, investigating if perhaps, perhaps Apple has benefited from disclosing Steve Jobs’ illness at the time they disclosed it instead of at another time (that the Einsteins at SEC would also consider suspicious, you can bet!)


67 posted on 01/23/2009 3:42:30 PM PST by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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