Madoff 'mistress' to publish her memoirs

Bernard Madoff’s decades-long fraud might not have been his only secret.

A new book says he had a two-decade affair with one of his investors.

The memoir, Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me, was written by Sheryl Weinstein, whose relationship with Madoff spanned more than 20 years while both were married, said John Murphy, a spokesman for publisher St Martin’s Press.

It goes on sale on August 25.

Madoff, 71, is serving 150 years in prison for defrauding investors.

Mrs Weinstein said she met him at a business meeting when she was chief financial officer for the charitable women’s organisation Hadassah, where she had a role in investment decisions.

Madoff attorney Ira Sorkin said he hopes the author “was more discreet with her investment obligations than she has allegedly been with her sex life”.

An attorney for Madoff’s wife, Ruth Madoff, said his client did not know about the “alleged affair”.

The attorney, Peter Chavkin, said the allegations were a powerful reminder to those who claim Ruth Madoff knew about her husband’s massive pyramid scheme “that there are some things that some spouses – however close they are – do not share with each other”.

At Bernard Madoff’s June sentencing, Mrs Weinstein was among investors to urge a long prison sentence for the financier, who admitted ripping off thousands of investors for billions of dollars for at least two decades.

She said she viewed meeting him 21 years ago “as perhaps the unluckiest day of my life”.

Mrs Weinstein said her investment losses had forced her to sell her Manhattan home and devastated her, her husband of 37 years, her son, her parents, her in-laws and everyone who depended on them.

She called Madoff “that terror, that monster, that horror, that beast ... an equal-opportunity destroyer”.

In her correspondence with the court, Weinstein made no mention of the affair, though she did write in a request to speak at sentencing that she wanted to address Madoff and the court because “I think the personal connection may be more difficult for him to ignore”.

Her husband, Ron Weinstein, said in a June letter to the court that all the money the couple had saved was lost by Madoff and that their marriage was strained.

“My wife has been a basket case,” he said. “And we are both very depressed.”