Where Is Bernie Madoff's Wife Ruth Madoff Now? All About Her Life 17 Years After His Billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme Was Exposed
- - Where Is Bernie Madoff's Wife Ruth Madoff Now? All About Her Life 17 Years After His Billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme Was Exposed
Jessica SagerDecember 12, 2025 at 11:00 PM
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Bernie Madoff and his wife Ruth Madoff met when they were teenagers in high school
After decades of marriage, Bernie was arrested in 2008 for defrauding investors and running the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time
Ruth stayed with him following his sentencing and has lived a quiet life since his death in prison in 2021
Bernie Madoff didn't just affect investors when his historic Ponzi scheme was exposed — his family, including his wife Ruth Madoff, was severely impacted as well.
Bernie's sons, Mark and Andrew Madoff, who worked for his firm, reported his fraud to the FBI in December 2008. He was arrested the next day for defrauding investors, including businesses, celebrities like Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick and charities such as Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation.
According to Reuters, prosecutors estimated that the scheme amounted to nearly $65 billion of fraud. In June 2009, Bernie was convicted and sentenced to 150 years in prison. Eleven years into his sentence, the disgraced financier sought a compassionate release in 2020 after he was diagnosed with terminal kidney failure, but he was denied. Bernie died in prison in April 2021 at the age of 82.
Ruth, Mark and Andrew were never charged with any crimes related to Bernie's Ponzi scheme, but they still struggled in its aftermath — something Bernie acknowledged at his own sentencing.
"I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren," he said, according to the New York Post. "That’s something I will live with for the rest of my life."
In December 2010, Mark died by suicide on the second anniversary of his father's arrest. Andrew died of mantle cell lymphoma in 2014 at the age of 48. He had previously gone into remission in 2003, and he told PEOPLE at the time that he blamed the stress of his father’s crimes for the recurrence when he was diagnosed again in 2012.
So where is Bernie Madoff's wife now? Here’s everything to know about Ruth Madoff and her life today.
Ruth and Bernie met in high school
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Bernard Madoff and wife Ruth at a party in May 2008 in Cabo san Lucas, Mexico.
Ruth was 13 years old when she first met Bernie at Far Rockaway High School in Queens, N.Y., and 18 when they got married in November 1959. Bernie was about three years older than her.
From the beginning of their relationship, she was "smitten," she told The New York Times in 2011.
"There could be a thousand similarities and a thousand things you agree on and are interested in, but I think without that je ne sais quoi chemistry it's not going to work," Ruth said. "But obviously you need a lot more than that, which is what I realized."
Their long history was a major reason why she stood by him after his arrest. "My loyalty to Bernie was fostered because I knew him my entire life. I mean, I was 13 when I met him; I'm now 70," she added. "So if you subtract the three years [since Bernie was arrested], it's my lifetime."
They had a “very good marriage” before his arrest, except for Bernie's mood swings
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Ruth Madoff after visiting her husband Bernard Madoff in prison on June 1, 2009 in New York City.
Ruth told The New York Times that home life with Bernie was generally "pleasant," noting his sense of humor and ability to laugh at himself. However, he had occasional mood swings that manifested in tirades about tidiness.
"Every now and then, if he was in a bad mood and the kids wrecked the place in Florida, he'd start yelling at them," she recalled. "That kind of happened later on. But he was always a little bit of a neat freak, and we all tried to keep it neat, and if we did, we did, and if we didn't, we didn't. It wasn't earth-shattering."
According to Ruth, their sons "saved” her from some of Bernie's darker turns with their playful ribbing, but her friends noticed Bernie would frequently ask her about tasks being completed at home.
"My friends used to tease me, 'Get her the clipboard, here comes Bernie.' Or, 'Get out your clipboard,' my friend would say,” Ruth added. “Because he was always asking me, 'Did you do this, did you take care of that?' And life was fairly complicated in terms of those kinds of things.”
Bernie allegedly cheated on her, but she forgave him
Despite Bernie’s alleged extramarital affairs, Ruth remained loyal to him throughout their marriage.
"I really regret not having more conversation with Bernie about his infidelities. I did, you know, address it at some point, and, you know, every time I thought something might have been going on. He denied everything," she told The New York Times.
Ruth said that Bernie never talked at length about his affairs and that she wished he had at least apologized for allegedly cheating on her. Still, she stood by him because of their shared history and their family.
"I decided that I wasn't going to get a divorce, I was going to stay married," she said. "Did it hurt me, the betrayal? Terribly. Terribly. But I stuck through it."
Ruth didn't know what a Ponzi scheme was when Bernie first confessed
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Bernard Madoff (C) walks out from Federal Court after a bail hearing in Manhattan January 5, 2009
In 2011, Andrew told 60 Minutes that when Bernie told the family about his financial crimes, Ruth was baffled, and the first question she asked was, "What's a Ponzi scheme?"
"She didn't even understand that," Andrew said. "I think it was me who answered and said that, 'It means that it's all fake. He's not been doing what he says he’s been doing.' "
He recalled that Bernie responded by admitting he'd lied not just to his investors, but also to his family, for years.
Ruth told The New York Times that Bernie "went to great lengths" to hide his Ponzi scheme from his family, especially from Ruth and their sons.
"I simply didn't know. He didn't tell me. I would have no way of knowing," she said. "He just kept it from all of us. None of them thought that anybody knew."
She and Bernie contemplated suicide after his arrest
In 2011, Ruth told 60 Minutes that she and Bernie contemplated suicide on Christmas Eve 2008. "I don't know whose idea it was, but we decided to kill ourselves because it was so horrendous what was happening," she said. She added that she sent millions of dollars' worth of jewelry to relatives because she was preparing to die.
Ruth and Bernie took Ambien and possibly Klonopin from their medicine cabinet. "I took what we had. He took more," she recalled. "We took the pills and woke up the next day. … It was very impulsive, and I'm glad we woke up."
She never considered leaving Bernie, but she stopped speaking to him
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Ruth Madoff
After Bernie's arrest, it never occurred to Ruth to get a divorce. It wasn't until their son Mark died by suicide in December 2010 that Ruth cut off contact with her husband — something that Mark had asked her to do prior to his death, which Ruth blamed herself for.
"I just wish, until my dying day, that I had done what he wanted," Ruth said of Mark on 60 Minutes.
"I don't know if it would have made a difference or not, but if I could change things, at least if I had tried, I would have felt a little better," she added. "I don't know if it would have mattered."
Ruth stopped speaking to Bernie after Mark's death, but she didn't file for divorce. "It doesn't matter to me,” she said. “He's going to die in prison."
She also told The New York Times that she asked Bernie to stop calling and writing to her. He eventually stopped, but he would still sometimes send her news articles with no letter or notes attached in case she'd "missed" them.
In a 2011 interview with ABC News, Bernie said that the worst part of being in prison was "not seeing my family and knowing they hate me. I betrayed them." He added that not being in communication with Ruth was “the hardest thing” for him and that he didn't believe that she actually hated him.
"She has no one. It's not fair to her. She lost her first son," he said. "She is a devoted wife and didn't care about the money."
Ruth will have to contribute to Bernie's victims after she dies
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Ruth Madoff, leaves the Metropolitan Correctional Center after visiting her husband in prison June 1, 2009
In June 2009, prosecutors reached an agreement with the Madoff family to sell off their assets to cover the debts of those affected by Bernie's Ponzi scheme. Ruth was left with $2.5 million.
That same year, a court-appointed trustee for the Madoff estate sued Ruth for $44.8 million to recoup money for Bernie's victims. In May 2019, the case was settled: According to Reuters, Ruth paid a $594,000 settlement, with $250,000 in cash and $344,000 in trusts for two of her grandchildren.
Upon her death, the remainder of her estate will also go toward paying the trustee to distribute to the victims.
She met two actresses who played her
Bob D'Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty ; Peter Kramer/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty ; HBO
Ruth Madoff played by Blythe Danner and Michelle Pfieffer
Ruth met with actress Blythe Danner, who played her in the 2016 ABC miniseries Madoff. Danner said that she felt like Ruth was "fragile" and "wasn't thrilled" that the network was dramatizing the scandal.
"It must be painful to have to relive it. Obviously, she had been through the mill," Danner told PEOPLE. "But she was lovely and just composed. Her daughter-in-law had said how much her kids enjoy being around her and you know as a grandmother it’s a very nice thing to hear."
Another TV dramatization, The Wizard of Lies, was released on HBO in 2017, starring Robert De Niro as Bernie and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ruth.
"I don't think it would be appropriate to say she 'cooperated' with the film," director Barry Levinson told the New York Post at the time. "Michelle simply spent a little time talking to Ruth. I don't think Michelle talked much about the script. It was simply to get to know her — however brief the time spent."
Where is Ruth Madoff now?
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Ruth Madoff appears on NBC News' "Today" show
Following Bernie's arrest and conviction, Ruth was turned down from several Manhattan apartments she'd tried to rent, The New York Times reported. By 2011, she had moved to a condo in Florida, where she volunteered with Meals on Wheels and worked with children who needed “extra emotional support.”
In 2012, Ruth moved to Old Greenwich, Conn., to be closer to her grandchildren, the New York Post reported. She reportedly lived in a home that belonged to her son Andrew and his estranged wife, then moved into a condominium complex after Andrew's death.
Jess Ekstrom, the Madoffs' niece, gave PEOPLE Now an update on her aunt in November 2019. "Ruth is incredible, and we love her. She's had a sense of humor through it all, so she's been great," she said.
In September 2020, Ruth moved into a waterfront mansion with her late son Mark's first wife, Susan Elkin, who welcomed two children with Mark, according to the New York Post.
She's lived a life out of the public eye since.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
