User reviews

A gripping and informative true crime documentary series directed by Joe Berlinger. The series details the rise and fall of Bernie Madoff, a Wall Street executive who ran a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of billions of dollars. Berlinger uses a mix of expert interviews and recreations to tell the story, with author Diana B. Henriques serving as a particularly knowledgeable and engaging guide through the complex events. The final chapter of the series focuses on the heartbreaking fallout of Madoff's crimes, including the impact on his family and the investors who lost everything.

One of the most impressive aspects of "Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street" is the way it untangles the complicated financial schemes at the heart of Madoff's fraud. Through clear explanations and well-chosen anecdotes, the series makes it easy for viewers to understand how Madoff was able to pull off such a massive fraud for so long. It's also shocking to see just how many people turned a blind eye to Madoff's crimes, and how the government failed to intervene despite multiple warning signs.

Overall, "Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street" is a must-watch for true crime fans, and serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of greed and the importance of holding those in positions of power accountable.

For anybody who just heard faint echoes about the "Madoff monster" this documentary provides a good insight into his crimes. However, starting with weak points first, it suffers from a severe case of Netflexite, aka that annoying device of starting somewhere mid-point of a story and working its way back and forward quite randomly.

Second, we never get any info about what happened to the Security & Exchange Commission's inspectors who "failed" to inspect or to the SEC at large, the "commission" that showed only gross incompetence or even collusion with the monster.

The story starts with Madoff arrest on 11 Dec. 2008, the terrible year of the great crisis and works its way back to Madoff's birth, youth, marriage to Ruth and origins of his firm, with excruciatingly boring details. There are many interviews with employees from the legit Madoff operations and none from the illegal - no surprise there.

There are also many re-enactment, of which at least half is superfluous. In short, Madoff run his illegal scheme from the 17th floor of the Lipstick building and the legal from the 19th. Employees from the 19th were forbidden entrance to the 17th and even Mark and Andrew, Bernie's son were not allowed. But even if this would be considered at least bizarre and worth exploring, nobody did anything for decades.

Some external connections started sniffing around Madoff as far back as 1992, when his name was mentioned to the SEC. Since then, there were six investigations on Madoff, all botched.

At this stage I would have like to watch a documentary about SEC and what happened to those "inspectors" - I guess nothing, but still...

Four episodes about this complex yet easy fraud are long to digest and the tragic ending comes none too soon, with Mark committing suicide, Andrew dying of cancer, Ruth being destitute and Bernie dying in the slammer, also none too soon. A tighter editing and less flourishing would have helped.

Detailed, interesting and exposing, the docu-series intricatly scrutinises much of the key apsects of Madoff ponzi scheme in which he was able to steal money for decades.

My only qualm with these sort of documentaries is that they work almost like a distraction from what's going on in other places. "Don't look over there, look over here!" Like, there was a documentary that came out about the crash of 2008 in which all the contributing perpetuators like George Bush appeared in the documentary to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing and blame it on other factors instead rather than the people making the decisions.

The titular person Madoff is referred to as "the monster of Wall Street", as if enormous fraud isn't cirrently business as usual on Wall Street, and that everything is as it should be after Bernie was arrested.

The documentary talks about the people who suffered and lost as a result, but make no mention that it's still perfectly fine on Wall Street to steal from poor people without any recompense. Bernie was arrested because he stole from rich people, which is the only crime on Wall Street that gets taken seriously. If all the hedge funds, financial advisory firms and brokerages and market makers who are currently breaking the law carte blanche to steal from low income and retail investors were to be arrested, Wall Street would become a skeleton of its former self. A ghost town. Yet according to this docu-series Madoff was the big boss to take down. The evil monster like no other.

The series is good and informatice but I still hope people realise that Madoff was the fall guy for Wall Street theft to continue, and that taking him out did nothing to help the little guy from being crushed under the boot of government and financial sector corruption.

A very interesting documentary on a topic that I think is good to know for most people. But, in typical Netflix fashion, is dragged out over way too many episodes and cost you way too much of your time.

The lack of original footage has been made up by some acting, but all scenes seem endlessly repeated. Good they interviewed a lot of involved people and they got a hand on some original content though. But it feels like it could fit in a 1 hour documentary movie. So yes this is a great topic, but I'd rather advice to read a news article on it than to spend your hours of precious time on Netflix.

Fantastic true crime documentary directed by joe berlinger, and coming to be one of the finest products on how to get an insight into the bernhard madoff ponzi scheme case, made possible through dilligent reasearch and a very well made dramatization by his production crew... a product thats quite on the brink of overwhelmingness to binge for breakfast...and just another star on my chart for being concerned about how economics really works when the road is cleared for any obstacles and monitoring, and crimes like this could happen... and does happen... and will happen in the years to come.

So whenever a ponzi scheme is mentioned and youve forgotten what that is, then ''madoff: the monster on wall street'' will stay there to explain to you...

The story itself is as unbelievable as true, that makes this documentary totally worth. The biggest Ponzi scheme ever behind the huge success of one of the most successful men of Wall Street. How is even possible that this has really happened? How is possible that nobody knew what was really going on? The authorities supposed to monitor financial operations and investigate crimes like this, ignored clear signals of the fraud. It's one of the situations that makes you believe money makes the world go round, no matter what.

The documentary is worth because the story deserves to be seen, however it could have been squeezed in half of the time, and after a bit the continuous slow motion sequences become a boring technique.

I am becoming a CFE. Certified Fraud Examiner. There were things I was not aware of that Madoff did. I watched Wizard Of Lies and they left out some things I wish they would have put in. This documentary did a lot of justice and more insights than anything else I have seen. I really liked the depositions from Madoff himself. I have not seen any of these until now. I also enjoyed how real life Madoff employees gave their insights on what it was like to work with Madoff. Again, really enjoyed this documentary. I still hate how he defrauded all of these people and in turn, he called his "clients" Greedy!! What a scum-bag.

An interesting documentary about the ever relevant story of Bernie Madoff (today's model being Sam Bankman-Fried), that is rather too glibly told and marred by crass and clumsily obvious dramatic reconstructions that add nothing of substance. That said, the interviews with a large number of participants are thorough and fascinating. As are the many clips of historical news stories. As ever was and continues to be, the story highlights the human love of wealth, the prestige and status that comes with possessing (or apparently possessing) it, and the follies that inevitably follow. Lots of mistakes made by a lot of people are highlighted as well as the tragic cost of these actions. A sobering reminder that if something appears too good to be true, then it is.

...Or how to lose 19 billion dollars...of other people's money. Bernie Madoff was indeed the monster of the title here, an ambitious, ruthless individual who found that the best way to not just personal fortune and fame but also tacit acceptance within Wall Street, was to create the world's biggest ever Ponzi Scheme, which basically as I understand it means taking other people's money without ever investing it, instead hoarding it and paying out withdrawal requests from this ever-growing stockpile of cash. Using secretive and in truth wholly rudimentary methods to report to his "clients", once he had everyone thinking he was the emperor, it took the market-shattering financial crash of 2008 to finally strip the charlatan of his credibility and finally expose him as the fraudster he was.

Netflix showed this rags-to-riches-back-to-rags saga over 4 episodes outlining Madoff's inexorable rise through Wall Street before the bubble burst in 2008 and his house of cards came crashing down. The story of course is as fascinating as it is cautionary, with almost every one of the human victims, not to mention the representatives of major financial institutions, being shown as having been completely blindsided by the apparently gravity-defying returns promised by Madoff to his exclusive but gullible not to mention greedy clients.

The series charts his express progress to the top and all the professional and luxurious accoutrements that went with it. With contributions from on the one hand, many of his office staff and actual video footage from Madoff's own depositions from inside prison, but notably not a word from any of his surviving family or even his second-in-command, as well as insights from financial journalists and investigators, including the young accountant at a rival who openly and early on called the sham for what it was, this was a darkly fascinating tale of greed and abuse of power on Wall Street. Almost as culpable you'd have to say, were the financial regulator of the New York Stock Exchange and the ratings agencies who throughout the whole affair completely missed the obvious with their laissez-faire policies coming home to roost with the ruin of many unsuspecting investors, including the French representative of one major investment fund who committed suicide days after the scandal broke.

My only complaint about this series is that it could perhaps have been edited down to a more manageable length plus I'm not a fan of the apparently new documentary technique of having lookalike-actors recreating actual events, especially here with far too much repetition of set-scenes - how many times did we have to watch "Madoff" strolling through his office in slow-motion?

Regardless of which, this documentary series held the attention of my wife and I throughout and even ended with a chilling statement that there may be other similar scandals awaiting discovery and that Madoff's fraud may not in fact be the biggest of them all, as it currently is.

As "Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street" (2023 release; 4 episodes of each about 1 hr.) opens, it is "December 11, 2008" and Bernie Madoff is arrested for financial fraud. We then go back in time to Madoff's youth and eventual humble beginnings as an accountant and investment adviser... At this point we are 10 minutes into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: this mini-series is directed by longtime documentarian Joe Berlinger ("Conversation With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes"). Here he revisits what Bernie Madoff was able to pull off. We all know that Madoff built a massive Ponzi scheme, but how he actually did it, and was able to do it for years and years, in fact DECADES, I must admit I didn't really know the details. Well, this documentary mini-series explains it all, and then some. What stands out (for me anyway) is how the Security & Exchange Commission had chance upon chance to put a stop to it, and failed. In fact, massively failed. It is absolutely amazing. The documentary features lots of talking heads, including people who worked at Madoff's trading and investment advisory firms. What holds back this documentary mini-series is that it features numerous "reenactments", resulting from a lack of archival footage.

"Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street" just premiered on Netflix in the last couple of days. If you, like me, were already aware in the most general terms of the Madoff Ponzi scheme but are interested how he actually got away with it for so long and on such a massive scale, I'd readily suggest you check out this documentary mini-series, and draw your own conclusion.

This is an absolutely fascinating story, mainly because it proves that truth is stranger than fiction. How on earth can a single man hold so much sway over people with his personality, that he can avert their attention so they don't notice the biggest swindle in Wall Street history happening? Because that's what it was -- Bernie Madoff using the force of his personality to continue to cajole and convince the SEC and other investigators to look the other way even in the face of overwhelming evidence of fraud.

Of course, this is also a damning proof that you can't trust the regulatory agencies (any of them -- not just the financial regulators) because they are made up of highly fallible people. I suppose the reason humanity has to keep learning this lesson the hard way is that we are ALL highly fallible people, so we don't seem to pick up on it when others are, too.

The docuseries itself is good, but not great. I give it a solid 5 stars, mostly for all of the interviews with former (innocent) employees, other key figures (like Harry Markopolos, the key whistleblower who was not listened to for years), some of the victims, and Madoff himself -- and the way the story is told clearly so that you really understand what went on. I had not understood exactly how Madoff's Ponzi scheme was constructed, or how it became so deeply entrenched in the financial community without being noticed as a scam, before watching this series.

I take a solid 5 stars off, though, because it would have been SO much better as a straight-up documentary. I would have loved to see more actual live footage and interviews or clips of actual REAL people talking about the story as it rolled out over the years.

What is the purpose of having actors who only look *faintly* like the real-life people they're supposed to portray, and who don't even do any actual acting? It's distracting and makes the entire thing take a lot longer to tell than it should. This could have been a gripping 2-hour documentary, and the fact that it was stretched out over more than 4 hours of psuedo-drama didn't do it any favors or make the story more interesting. Real life stories that are this compelling don't need dramatic reenacting to be interesting. They ARE the drama.

At most, if the director was insistent on using these "acting" montages, they should have been much shorter, less intrusive to the story itself, and much less indulgent in slo-mo (the slo-mo cutaway to "Madoff" walking through the office while employees shower him with dollar bills, which got repeated more than once, is an example of an annoyingly overused scene).

The few times they also tried that "actor moves from scene to set" thing (the same thing Hagai Levi did to absolute BRILLIANT effect in Scenes from a Marriage) not only fell flat, but were also so distracting that I had to stop and rewind so I could hear what was being said, since my mind immediately became focused on looking at the film crew.

The reasons it worked so well in Scenes from a Marriage were 1) it was first used BEFORE the scene began, so you weren't already involved in the scene and thus distracted by the effect of seeing the camera crew and set and 2) Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac are talented and well-known enough actors to be interesting to watch outside of their characters. In this docuseries, we don't really care about the guy who got dressed up as Madoff and never delivered a line (sorry, guy who played Madoff, but that's the way it goes).

Anyway, I definitely think the series is worth watching to learn more about the Madoff scandal, but you might find yourself less riveted than with other (much better done) series that are of a similar length.

Ponzi Schemes are something I've struggled to understand for a long time. I also know Bernie Madoff had the largest in history.

This documentary does a great job creating a timeline of Madoff's personality, success, and significance to the investing market. It also illustrates the key players involved in his success and investigation.

I will also echo it might be a little stretched for 4 episodes, although 4 decades worth of fraud and lies are certainly worth 4 episodes. None of the content is irrelevant, but the grandiosity of the story is just not executed well enough.

It's an incredible story. The number of times he narrowly avoids fate, growing so much larger each time. The actors involved in keeping his interest alive. How involved he is with the development of the SEC. Just the sheer stature of his character. We're told about these elements, but they're kinda glossed over in a way. A lot of the details could've been acted out through the playing biopic rather than being told by interviewees

He accounted for 9% of volume exchanged on the NYSE, and yet i don't feel like I get a good glimpse of how extravagantly he and everyone around him was able to live. How much worse are the effects of the crash in 2008 made when this market maker can't pay everyone back?

Overall great content, just leaves me wanting more.

Bernie Madoff perpetrated one of the greatest frauds in history, but also one of the simplest: he simply pretended to have bought low and sold high, and with great reported profits nobody asked for their money back, at least not until the stock market crashed in 2008. This series describes him an a "monster", but I find it hard to hate him as much as the tech frauds: at least he wasn't claiming he could save the world. What's interesting is his ordinary origins (he was New York Jewish middle class, his right-hand man was Italian-American), and the sense to which the scam depended on affinity fraud (selling to people from his own background); the contrast with the Europeans he conned, old-money banking aristocracy, is striking. There are many remarkable details of this story, but like many Netflix documentaries it's slightly too long, with too many people commenting without adding that much information; no-one willing to confess to being aware of the fraud gives an interview (although there is film of Bernie himself claiming all responsibility).

Featuring slow-motion actor re-enactments, the New York Stock Exchange-style display graphics scrolling along the bottom of the screen, and obligatory views of hysterical brokers on the trading floor, it's all really interesting. But I believe that I've had enough of being entertained by the real atrocities of unrepentant guys. At least Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street offers the victims of white collar crimes whose stories are frequently ignored a voice. This series shed light on atrocities that take place in Wall Street and how it is constantly ignored even though multiple red flags. Pity all the victims involved.

What is not excellent and what was used to really sell this documentary as new info, is the salacious and absolutely unproven allegation that Madoff was using organized crime and drug cartel money. The only evidence of this they offer is that Madoff parked money in the Cayman Islands, which even the documentary admitted, so do millions of legitimate investors. The evidence against him using funds from criminal enterprises, however, is overwhelming and ignored. If he were using such funds he would never have had the cash shortfalls he experienced. OG and drug cartel monies are not subject to the vagaries of the markets. Hence, when the market crash came in 2008, Bernie would have been sitting pretty with his OC money. Lastly, if Madoff had been fronting OC money and that yappy dog, Harry Markopolos, was threatening to expose and end the scheme, he would have woken up dead!

Otherwise, it was an excellent retelling of the Madoff tale and underscores how good and accurate the Robert De Niro/ Michelle Pfeiffer 'Wizard of Lies' was.

Of course, the story in interesting - frustrating, upsetting, shocking - and the basic details are known. Yes, there are MANY tiny details that add important technical and sometimes compelling information, but it's painfully obvious that 5he producers' objective was to make a series of a particular length.

There is much coverage of this story out there. The narrative structure here is barely linear, as the producers inject actor portrayals and tangent lines and interviews, obviously to extend the time of each episode. The artifice of the unnecessary actor scenes and slow motion camera effects are just film school level fluff.

This is a complex story with a huge quantity and breadth of information. Netflix sacrificed quality of documentary for the sake of quick production and Hollywood-style entertainment.

As you watch, note the names of investigative journalists, authors and particularly the fince professional who alerted the SEC over many years. If you want a better quality exposition on this subject, track down their work, including other documentaries.

I already knew a lot about the Madoff scandal before watching this documentary, but I am glad I watched it because I learned a lot of new things. The amount of new footage and testimony in this documentary is impressive. Madoff and associates perpetrated a despicable financial fraud, and I think not everybody has been properly held accountable for it. The documentary does a great job investigating this and shedding new light on the true dimensions of the Madoff scandal.

I find it really odd that SEC did not do a better investigation of Madoff. All they had to do was call the independent clearing house and verify if the trades are actually taking place, a 30-minute exercise. I think it is very much possible that Madoff bribed someone high enough at SEC, and that person (or persons) then intervened internally at SEC and stopped those investigations. This, to me, is a more plausible explanation of SEC's inaction, than just simply blaming their "incompetence". After this documentary, I think SEC should do a new internal investigation on this.

The stories of Madoff's victims are heart-breaking. I wonder if these victims ever considered suing SEC (a government agency), as clearly the SEC's inaction contributed to their losses. Sounds like a good class-action lawsuit scenario to me. SEC exists precisely to protect investors, and especially less-savvy individual investors, from such fraud.

A similar case could perhaps be argued against Chase, the bank that held Madoff's Ponzi scheme bank account, but did not act despite millions of dollars flowing in and out of the account routinely and without any good explanation. Madoff was making large wires in and out of various offshore accounts, which is not a pattern consistent with daily trading. If Madoff was making actual trades as he claimed, then the frequency of those wires should be much higher and their individual amounts much smaller, to settle the supposedly daily trades of US securities. So this was a missed "smoking gun".

This is a great series that breaks down and goes in depth into the fraudulent tale of Bernie Madoff. It was very entertaining and well made and I hope Netflix makes more like this. The show interviews different people who have interacted with Madoff in different ways and explains everything from his lifestyle and family, to his frauds and firm on Wall Street. I would recommend for people to watch who are wanting to learn about Wall Street and finance because, rather then just tell a story of a giant scam, it also explains the finance industry and you end up learning a lot about the Wall Street.

This is a very interesting documentary, but has some leftist slants. The biggest is the decision by the documentary makers to totally ignore the cause of the 08 housing crisis that triggered the collapse of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. In the documentary, they simply place the blame on large financial corporations taking large pools of bad mortgages and selling them to whoever would buy them. Certainly, we see that explored in depth in movies like Margin Call. Later, we see a clip of former president Obama referring to the lack of government regulations as an enabler of the housing collapse, and it's later ramifications. It's absolutely true that big time mortgage bankers created exotic financial instruments to disguise sub-prime mortgages and sell them worldwide to anyone willing to take the bait when the market sank into a morass of worthless loans to keep their corporations alive. But the question of why large financial institutions would torpedo the housing market with a blizzard of sub-prime loans and thus force themselves to play musical chairs with piles of worthless mortgages is never mentioned. The answer is that they did so with the greatest reluctance, but had to because of government regulation. Yes, the government demanded lending standards be reduced supposedly so that the poor and disadvantaged could buy homes. President Clinton demanded Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae have at least 50% of their mortgages be sub-prime. Congress took it from there and soon essentially anyone capable of walking into a financial institution could get a mortgage making use of notorious financial instruments like the "liar loan". Of course, speculators and people with little money yet eager to buy a house went wild. Not surprisingly, a Cloverfield monster sized housing bubble was created, and as all financial bubbles do, it finally burst in everyone's face. There is no regulator protection from bad politics.

This series traces the rise and fall of one Bernie Madoff. A financial serial killer in the sense he eventually destroys the finances of thousands through his criminal activities.

He ran a investment business which in effect was a Ponzi scheme:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors. Madoff promised to invest clients money and generate high returns. Instead clients money was stolen by Madoff and others and fake statements given to them saying money had been invested when it had not.

This series use examples of many stupid rich individuals who through total worship of money believed if they give their money to "one of their own" he will make sure they get massive profits.

Some did profit and gained massively from this fraud and a few have now returned a proportion of what they received.

The SEC and banks etc were totally useless in overseeing Madoff despite being repeatedly told by a few honest people he was running a clear scam.

As one of the commentators said in effect you cannot compete with the likes of a Madoff who lives his life by cheating and swindling others.

Some of the so called "victims" are giving us a sob story in the series but a lot of viewers will have no sympathy for them.

What the show does not say is that in a press release of September 2022 it is confirmed by the Dept of justice that money has been repaid:

".... funds will be sent to 40,000 victims worldwide, the eighth payment to victims that will bring their total recovery from all sources of compensation to 88.35% of their losses. "

So many victims pleading poverty in the series have gotten back most of what they lost.

Why did the series not mention this?

Deduct 2 marks for that omission in my rating, so=

5/10.

"A white collar crime is different than a blue collar crime. In a blue-collar crime a body drops before you investigate whereas in a white-collar crime they drop afterwards!" 1960s. The end of I Love Lucy era but the continuation of the conformist culture period that had became a way of American life just in the preceding decade. In the Wild West of the Wall Street, the race to become rich, the exuberance and swashbuckling became the normal operative norms. This gave a rise to an over-the-counter market which then harbored the small mostly less reputable companies and provided an easy loophole for them to trade the unregulated mutual funds based on a pool concept. And then came along a young man who was at right place and at right time and who in order to impress his father-in-law started a small security company for penny-stocks with only few clients with $5000 of his own and rest with a loan from his father-in-law. Later he went on pioneering the computerized trading that would consolidate all the off-the-exchange markets, pink sheets, small firms into NASDAQ. His biggest contribution. He also became a member of the Securities Investors Protection Corporation - SIPC. He was everyone's Go-to-guy!

But greed is a bottomless pit with no ceiling. It is the thirst of power and the avarice that has spawned many scams for many years! It is not just about making money but proving that one is invincible while deluding one's own self that he or she is imperceivable almost sacrosanct.

A $64 billion scam as a result of his Ponzi scheme rattled the nation and shattered the lives of many. The total number of victims were counted to be more than 35,000 that included hardworking people from the working class, retirees, senior citizens, rich and famous and even non-profit organizations! He ran this Ponzi scheme for years and that proves SEC was either bedazzled by him or it just trusted him blindly. Although it somewhat lacks ignominious details, the documentary is engrossing, compelling, didactic...Documentary is rightly named. But will there be a sequel? Will there be another monster in the Wall Street? Probably yes, the bitter reality! "History never repeats itself but it often rhymes" - Mark Twain. A must watch.