Bernie Madoff Speaks Out From Prison
BALDWIN: It is D-Day for the disgraced former mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner sentenced today for kissing and grabbing three women. He will serve 90 days in home confinement, pay a fine, and serve three years probation. Filner resigned from office after 19 women came forward accusing him of harassment during his tenure as mayor and as U.S. congressman. Here's another name for you. Bernie Madoff, former titan of Wall Street, says people on the outside won't take his calls from the prison pay phone, not his wife, not his son, not his brother Peter, who is also serving time. No one is talking to Bernie. Five years ago this Wednesday, Bernie Madoff posed for the feds, famous mug shots. He later pleaded guilty to scamming investors out of billions of dollars, the biggest financial fraud in U.S. history. As to the many people he robbed, including some who just lost it all, Madoff is now telling "The Wall Street Journal" it is their fault, not his fault, their fault. Here's a quote from that interview with "The Wall Street Journal." "People ask me all the time, how did I produce those great returns? I refused to tell them," says Madoff, "and they still invested." He says it was up to them to ask more questions. Aaron Smith of CNN Money is with me and Aaron Smith has spoken to Bernie Madoff before from that prison down in North Carolina before. And from your interview, he was a bit contrite until it sounds like a follow-up phone call which we will get to, but this interview with the "Wall Street Journal," a different tone.</s>AARON SMITH, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I actually spoke to him a few times. It was several months ago. It was about six months ago over the phone. And he did seem to -- he said he felt bad...</s>BALDWIN: He felt bad.</s>SMITH: ... about some of the victims. He felt very bad, he was telling me, about his son committing suicide.</s>BALDWIN: Very tragic.</s>SMITH: And he accepted responsibility for it. Then he said he also probably caused the heart attack of Jeffry Picower, who was one of his biggest investors early on. But then he segued directly into blaming Picower and two other major investors, Norman Levy and Carl Shapiro, for basically prompting him to start the Ponzi scheme, because they didn't bail him out after the Black Monday crash of 1987. He needed their help. They refused to help him, so he had to start a Ponzi scheme.</s>BALDWIN: But the initial phone call you had with him, pretty contrite, but then you told me, because it sounds like he had such a different tone with "The Wall Street Journal" reporter, he even followed up and called you back, Aaron. You have Bernie Madoff calling you up, yelling at you.</s>SMITH: Yes, the last conversation I had with him was in June. He called me up. I was driving through Austin, stop-and-go traffic. I get this call on my BlackBerry. It's Bernie yelling at me. He didn't like the story, and he said that -- well, he claimed he never mentioned Black Monday in 1987. He claimed that he told me he started the Ponzi scheme in 1992. And so I said to him, well, Bernie, actually, you did not say that to me. We had a bit of a back and forth. Interestingly, Frank DiPascali, who's the government witness in the ongoing federal court trial, was just saying a few days ago that he had been working for Bernie since 1975, and fraudulent activity had been going on for as long as he could remember.</s>BALDWIN: Wow.</s>SMITH: So we're all different kinds of timelines here and no one really knows when Bernie Madoff started the Ponzi scheme, maybe not even Bernie himself.</s>BALDWIN: He's got a lot of time to think about it, I suppose, in prison in North Carolina. Aaron Smith with CNN Money, thank you very much for sharing your fascinating phone conversations with this man.</s>BALDWIN: You use the Web sites all the time, Facebook, Google, Twitter, tech giants writing a letter to Washington asking tough questions about online surveillance. Sounds like they're looking out for you, right? Our next guest says the companies are hypocrites and this is just a plain, flat public relations move. We will talk about that. Plus, this. Ouch. These are sheets of ice crashing onto these cars, smashing them, and that is not it. Thousands of flights canceled today, roads extraordinarily slick. When will the early winter blast end? We will talk weather coming up.