BERNIE REACHED FOR THE STARS

IF it was a movie, you’d scoff at a character called Madoff who literally made off with billions of dollars eagerly handed over by wealthy clients and spent it on his lavish lifestyle, right under their noses. Would-be investors paid fortunes to join exclusive golf clubs just to bump into Bernie, left, who died in jail this week aged 82, and beg him to take their millions – so he could pay them out to other dupes further up the pyramid scheme as ‘dividends’. While his trial in 2008 heard that he robbed from the poor as well as the rich, ‘poor’ is a relative term for some, as investors needed at least $1million to get into his incredibly successful scheme: Stephen Spielberg, Kevin Bacon and Zsa Zsa Gabor were among many too dazzled by fabulous ‘returns’ to recall the old adage that if something looks too good to be true…