Jim Coppersmith, the former president and general manager of WCVB-Channel 5 in Boston, didn’t hold back upon hearing about the death of Bernie Madoff, the New York financier who fleeced victims of his Ponzi scheme out of billions of dollars.
“Today ought to be declared a Jewish holiday,” said Coppersmith.
Bernard J. Madoff’s security swindle — which was exposed in December 2008 — affected individual investors, charitable organizations, pension funds, hedge funds and others, costing its victims an estimated $17.5 billion. He pleaded guilty to the fraud charges in 2009 and received a 150-year sentence.
He was 82 when his death, from natural causes, was announced Wednesday morning.
While Madoff spent the last 12 years in jail, his victims were tasked with rebuilding their portfolios and, in some cases, their lives. The overwhelming majority of Madoff’s victims, Coppersmith said, were Jewish.
“There’s no question it was horrible,” said Deborah Coltin, who is the executive director of the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation of Salem, which focuses much of its philanthropic effort on Jewish youth (including sending them to Israel every summer). The foundation lost an estimated $8 million endowment and had to shut down for a period.
Among the hardest-hit aspects of the foundation was the employee 401(k) fund, which was wiped out. Lappin, who was 88 at the time (he died last year), covered the loss of the retirement funds personally and restored them.
“Bob Lappin was a man of incredible character,” said Coppersmith, who lives in Marblehead. “He did that, and I admire him so much for it.”
“That was millions of dollars,” Coltin said. “I thought about that a lot when I heard that (Madoff) had died. Mr. Lappin worked so hard to restore that fund. He would always say to us that he wanted to do the right thing, because he wanted to be able to sleep at night.
“So many people were affected. Some lost their life savings, some lost their homes, some people their lives, through suicide. Hearing about it (Wednesday) brought it all back.”
However, both Coppersmith and Coltin saw a cautionary tale in what happened as a result of the Madoff fraud.
“I represented the sum total of 50 years of work,” Coppersmith said, regarding his losses. “Some of it I got back. The federal government went five years back, and added the cost of the taxes paid for fictitious money. That, I got back.
“It was a lesson in perseverance and endurance. We figured out a way to recover from it and we’re doing fine now. But it was a lot of money, I’ll tell you that.”
He said as soon as he heard Madoff had been arrested and led out of his offices in handcuffs, he knew he was in trouble.
“I got a call from someone who said ‘they just took Bernie Madoff out in handcuffs.’ There was never a moment that I didn’t realize I was victimized,” he said.
Coltin said the period of Madoff’s swindles being discovered — and its aftermath — is a clear line of demarcation for the foundation.
“We see it as pre-Madoff and post-Madoff,” she said. “But Mr. Lappin, and the Jewish community, were so good. So charitable. We were able to recover and rebuild.”
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].