Kevin Bacon is opening up about how he and his wife lost "most of our money" in Bernie Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme.
In an appearance on this week's episode of Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes' "Smartless" podcast, the 64-year-old "Footloose" star explained that he and wife Kyra Sedgewick were among Madoff's 40,000 victims.
He was drawn to the promise of a high return on his investment with Madoff but in hindsight the tantalizing figures should have been a warning sign. "There's obvious life lessons there," Bacon said. "If something is too good to be true, it's too good to be true."
Madoff's massive fraud scheme is estimated to have ripped clients off to the tune of $65 billion.
Despite the massive financial hit he took, Bacon admitted that he didn't expect to receive much sympathy for what he experienced.
"I think people will be not happy to hear me whining about money," he said.
Indeed, despite saying that he was "angry" at the time, Bacon remained well aware that he was still in a relatively fortunate situation compared to some of Madoff's other victims.
"There were a lot of people who were much worse off than we were – old people, people whose retirement funds were completely decimated," he said. "There's always going to be somebody that's going to have it a lot worse than you."
There's obvious life lessons there — if something is too good to be true, it's too good to be true.Kevin Bacon
Bacon said that he had recouped a "portion" of his losses in the years since but has not yet been made whole.
Instead of letting the negative circumstances get the best of them, Bacon said that he and his wife decided to focus on the positives in their life.
"When something like that happens, you look at each other and you go, 'Well, that sucks,'" he said. "'Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work.'"
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