Bernard L. Madoff, a middle-class kid from Queens, N.Y., had spent 30 years building a stock trading business based on the once unthinkable concept that stocks could be traded faster, more efficiently and -- most importantly -- cheaper via computers.
His brother Peter and his two sons, Mark and Andrew, joined the family business housed in the iconic Lipstick Building in Midtown Manhattan.
Bernard Madoff walks back to his apartment in New York. (REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton)
Media and onlookers crowd the doorway outside the home of accused swindler Bernard Madoff on New York City's upper East Side. (REUTERS/Mike Segar )
The living room is pictured during U.S. Marshals' media tour of imprisoned fraudster Bernard Madoff's penthouse apartment in New York. (REUTERS/US Marshals)
Bernard Madoff is escorted from Federal Court in New York January 5, 2009. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)
Defrauded investors and their supporters hold signs during a rally near the United States Courthouse in lower Manhattan. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)
Bernard L. Madoff pleaded guilty March 12, 2009, to orchestrating the biggest investment fraud in Wall Street history and was jailed to await a sentence that could keep him in prison for the rest of his life. (REUTERS/UNITED STATES MARSHALS SERVICE/FOIA/Handout (UNITED STATES))