Once Again Everybody Loves A Con Man-Except That Person Being Conned-With An Exception-The Bernie Madoff Exception-Robert DeNiro’s “The Wizard Of Lies” (2017)-A Short HBO Television Review

By Seth Garth

The beauty of the Ponzi scheme is that it has, or should have, few moving parts. I know because I was the victim of one myself and because that seems to have been the real reason that Bernie Madoff wound up with a 150-year sentence (1800 long months keeping the fellow lifers at bay). At least and who knows where cinematic license takes over from the facts, the real facts, that is what it looked like to me as we received precious few tidbits about how much was stolen and how  and plenty about family sorrows and Bernie regrets in the made-for-television film The Wizard of Lies. I would add another layer of difficulty once you throw esteemed actor Robert DeNiro into the Bernie role with his now patented style which may or may not have been what the real Bernie was all about. What if Bernie really wasn’t sorry, what if he didn’t give a fuck about who he screwed even his family which is where I would place his feelings about the matter. All the rest was window dressing and the usual lawyerly advise (of course they were not going to jail so the advice, the expensive advice, flowed freely).     

  

Here is a real-life Ponzi just so the shut-ins and naïve know what it is like when guy (and nothing precludes a gal from doing the deed) has his Ponzi hat on. Has his act together. (By the way for those not familiar with con artist history, and shame on you for not being aware, the original scam was started back in the early 20^th century by an Armenian guy Jimmy Ajemian who named it after his son Ponzi although some historians claim it was invented by a guy named Professor Moriarty over in Scotland to do his brethren out of their dough.) If you need to go to the books because what I want to talk about in one Eddie Daley who was born a con artist, not made. Eddie started in maybe second grade conning us out of our milk money with a simple game of dice which he got from some reprobate uncle who was doing time in the Suffolk County House of Correction. The dice were loaded but what did we know when Eddie was at work.   

The Ponzi scheme came later, maybe freshman year in high school, when we were so from hunger for date money, for gas money for freaking jukebox money anything that did not require heavy lifting was like catnip to us. (By the way for those who still don’t know what a Ponzi is I didn’t either until much later. Maybe college when I was reading some book which mentioned the word, and the play. I recognized right away what Eddie had been up to). Eddie, no question, was a smooth operator, had nerves of steel probably. In any case Eddie was my best friend growing up and I had benefited a few times from his scams (and got the “rejects” of the girls that were always hovering over him). When he asked me to “borrow” ten dollars, a lot of money for a poor, very poor working-class family guy, and a promise to pay back twelve I said sure. And a few days later he paid back the ten and two extra which he insisted I take after my initial refusal.

Then Eddie didn’t bother me about money for maybe a month, six weeks and then it was twenty with a twenty-five promise pay back. That time since I had a hot date and since it was like finding money on the ground I didn’t even refuse the extra dough when he paid me back a week later. I don’t really need to go further since the story would just be a series of repetitions. All I need to do to tell how much I was taken for-seventy bucks when the whole thing was exposed and what I (and the one hundred and twenty-three other classmates and neighbors who were stiffed) did about it-nothing. Me, for a very simple reason I didn’t want anybody to know my “best” friend had screwed me over like any rube. The others may have had their own reasons. but I am sure they were close to mine, or that it was not worth the legal hassle to have him prosecuted. Later he would not be so lucky when he tried to do an independent drug deal down in Mexico trying to cut out the cartel boys. Don’t ask about what happened since I don’t know the details.         

      

Of course Eddie knew what every con artist knew-people, at least some people, and enough to make such a scheme work are just greedy enough to take a chance on any proposition that requires no heavy lifting, no personal risk and enough profit to get off the sloth. Eddie from day one kept it simple and kept only himself in the loop, no loose ends. Bernie knew that, knew it well but got caught up in trying to run too many operations under too many different scenarios and while he will for a long time to come be the textbook guy for big-time cons this should be for his mistakes that sunk him as well. Still when Bernie was on he was the king hell king himself.  I will give just one example from the film and again who knows if it was the film people dolling the episode up. A guy knowing Bernie’s rep for turning a couple of loaves of bread and a few Fulton Fish Market fish into enough to feed the multitude wanted to heavily invest in some easy high interest, high return no backside Bernie project. Bernie plays hardball, no go, the other guy ups the ante and so on from a mere one hundred million to four when Berne “sees the light,” sees what he needs to back up his increasing loses. Nice, they should re-run that one down in North Carolina or wherever Berne is now. Bernie had his run, lost his wife, sons, everything but when he was on a roll he was something. So was Eddie Daley they must have been carrying the same DNA. Come to think of it though maybe the Eddie story I told and HBO told should be taken as a cautionary tale considering what happened to them. Nah, there are guys out there right now heating up their brains figuring the next angle-hold onto your wallets.