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 20th
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.
