Madoffs Shared Much; Question Is How Much?

To friends, they were “Bernie-and-Ruth” or “Ruth-and-Bernie,” a pair so inseparable that you wouldn’t mention one without the other. After nearly 50 years of marriage, they worked in the same Midtown Manhattan office, they traveled together, and they dined together night after night, just the two of them.

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“They came once or twice a week, for about 22 years, and for the last five I could count on one hand the number of times they came with another couple,” says Giuliano Zuliani, owner of Primola, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. “They always wanted a quiet table in the back, just the two of them.”

But little about the love story of Ruth and Bernard Madoff looks enviable today.

On Dec. 10, according to a court filing by the Madoffs’ lawyer, Mr. Madoff admitted to his wife and their two sons that his multibillion-dollar hedge fund was an elaborate Ponzi scheme. If that is true, Ruth Madoff learned of her husband’s crimes as suddenly as the rest of the world. One day, she was married to a stock-market genius, the next she was married to one of history’s great con men.

That, anyway, is the official Madoff version of events. At this point, as a mess that Mr. Madoff himself is said to have estimated at $50 billion lands in litigation, the main characters aren’t talking. In the absence of direct answers, all that’s left is the sort of psychological puzzle that belongs in Act II of a David Mamet drama, right before we find out who are the players and who are the played.

Was Mrs. Madoff really blindsided? In the social circles where the couple once traveled, both possibilities are unnerving — that Ruth Madoff was in on this, or that she wasn’t. If she isn’t a confederate, after all, then she arguably should be counted among Bernard Madoff’s victims. Either way, wittingly or not, she was an essential asset to her husband, humanizing him and drawing people into his orbit.

“All I will say on the subject is that it’s hard to imagine that she could live with the guy for 50 years and have no inkling,” says Donald Rosenzweig, a childhood friend of Ruth’s and an investor in Madoff Investment Securities. “Could she attract people to him? Yes. Was she out there shilling for him? I doubt it. But maybe.”

Federal prosecutors have not charged Mrs. Madoff with any crimes, and though she is currently living with her husband, who is under house arrest in their Upper East Side penthouse, she can come and go as she pleases. She has surrendered her passport and agreed to a deal with the United States attorney’s office that freezes her assets and grants her an undisclosed monthly allowance for living expenses, the cost of security for the couple and legal fees. The conditions of bail for Mr. Madoff include a $10 million bond secured by homes in Mrs. Madoff’s name.

The Legal Tangle

Ira L. Sorkin, a prominent white-collar defense lawyer who represents Mrs. Madoff and her husband, declined to comment. That the Madoffs now share a lawyer suggests she is not currently in any legal peril, lawyers say, because if prosecutors were to hint that she was a target of this investigation, she would most likely need her own representation.

But negotiations over a possible plea deal with Mr. Madoff are not over. If they stall, prosecutors could threaten to indict Mrs. Madoff as leverage.

“This is tender territory for prosecutors, because you never want to seem like you’re overreaching,” says Sean O’Shea, a lawyer who was chief of the business and securities fraud unit of the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn. “But this is the scam of the century, so the prosecutors will leave no stone unturned. It’ll be hard for them if they have evidence against Mrs. Madoff to leave her on the sidelines. But they won’t threaten her in order to get him without very good proof.”

The Madoffs grew up in the same Queens neighborhood, Laurelton, then a lower-middle-class and predominantly Jewish area, not far from what is now Kennedy Airport. Ruthie Alpern, as she was then known, was a poised and chatty blonde with an updo and a winning smile. As a senior, she was voted “Josie College,” a ’50s-vintage yearbook honor that pegged her as preppy, bright and going places.

“She was cute and she had really good manners,” said Millie Beck, a classmate. “Always very sweet, very lovely. Kind of all-American looking.”

It’s a look she made an effort to maintain. One of the duties of a manager in Mr. Madoff’s London office was to provide Mrs. Madoff with a steady supply of Boots No. 7 Protect & Perfect Beauty Serum. Her tastes in clothing run toward Bergdorf and Barneys, but she isn’t a flashy or pretentious dresser. She wears a simple wedding band, rather than the oversize diamond that is the ring of choice among New York’s moneyed elite.

CONTINUED : The warmer of the two

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