Sondra and Marvin Wiener murder suicide: Bernie Madoff sister and husband found dead of gunshot wounds at their Boynton Beach, Florida home.
The downward spiral of a family saga continues… The sister of convicted Ponzi fraudster Bernie Madoff has died, along with her husband, in a suspected murder suicide after the couples’ bodies were found at a Florida residence.
Sondra Wiener, 86, and Marvin Wiener, 90, were both found dead Thursday night in their private gated community home in Valencia Lakes, just outside of Tampa, BocaNewsNow reported.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office late Sunday confirmed the couples’ deaths were the results of fatal gunshot wounds. Police had yet to confirm who killed the other.
The couple’s deaths come just under a year after Bernard Madoff dying in prison in April after being sentenced to 150 years in prison. The disgraced financier was aged 82 at the time of his death.
Madoff was a fixture on Wall Street before his fall in 2008, when he was arrested and pleaded guilty to operating a decades-long Ponzi scheme that swindled thousands out of their life savings, according to federal prosecutors.
Bernie Madoff sister and brother in law suit
The disgraced financier defrauded roughly 37,000 people in 136 countries – out of up to $65 billion.
Not spared in the sprawling fraud were Sondra Wiener and her husband, with the couple reportedly losing $3 million.
The couple were sued in 2010 in a suit filed by the trustee representing Madoff’s victims, alleging that Sondra and Marvin ‘received at least $1,715,000 of other people’s money,’ the Sun Sentinel reported in 2010.
The outcome of that specific claim could not be immediately determined.
Wiener had been among one of five relatives who received packages filled with pricey heirlooms allegedly mailed by Madoff and his wife, Ruth, on Christmas Eve 2008 — just days after the financier’s sons turned him over to authorities for defrauding his clients.
Though the sister did not work for Madoff Securities, her son Charles, 50, worked there for decades, once serving as the director of administration.
The deaths of Bernie Madoff’s sister and brother-in-law come as the latest installment of a series of tragedies surrounding the family of the fallen financier.
Family capitulation
His son, Mark, hanged himself inside his New York City apartment in 2010, at the age of 46.
His other son, Andrew, died of cancer in 2014 at age 48. In an interview prior to his death, the younger son blamed their father for his recurrence of the rare cancer mantle-cell lymphoma, which ultimately took his life.
‘One way to think of this is the scandal and everything that happened killed my brother very quickly. And it’s killing me slowly,’ Andrew told People magazine before his death.
Both Madoff sons denied knowing about the fraud and were never criminally charged in connection with the scheme. A previous report by Reuters indicated prosecutors had still considering criminal charges against the brothers, only for both brothers to pass away.
Madoff’s wife, 80-year-old Ruth Madoff, previously claimed that she and her husband both attempted suicide together during his scandal.
However, their attempt, which consisted of downing prescription pills Ambien and Klonopin in December 2008, failed.
‘I don’t know whose idea it was, but we decided to kill ourselves because it was so horrendous what was happening,’ Madoff told CBS News years after the incident. ‘We had terrible phone calls. Hate mail, just beyond anything and I said “…I just can’t go on anymore.”‘
‘I took what we had, he took more,’ Ruth told the outlet. ‘We took pills and woke up the next day….It was very impulsive and I am glad we woke up.’
Authorities continue to investigate Sondra and Marvin Wiener’s deaths.
