Andrew Madoff, Convicted Conman’s Last Surviving Son, Dies at 48

Andrew Howard Madoff was born on April 8, 1966, and raised in the New York suburb of Roslyn, on Long Island. He was the better student, and his older brother was the better athlete, according to Laurie Sandell’s “Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family” (2011), written with Andrew Madoff’s approval and participation.

Dock Boys

During summers, both brothers worked as dock boys at what became the Montauk Yacht Club. They started a boat-washing business. Then they began working as summer interns for their father’s firm.

Andrew Madoff majored in finance in the undergraduate business program at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, graduating in 1988. Following a month backpacking around Europe, he began working for his dad on Aug. 1, 1988. His brother, too, had gone to work for their father upon graduating from the University of Michigan two years earlier.

The brothers supervised the stock-trading desks on the 18th and 19th floors of the so-called Lipstick Building on Third Avenue in Manhattan. Andrew Madoff, as head of equities, built the firm’s proprietary-trading desk; Mark Madoff was head of sales. Down on the 17th floor, their father ran the investment-management business that seemed to produce consistently stellar returns, before it was exposed as a sham.

‘A Shield’

In hindsight, Andrew Madoff told Sandell for her book, it became evident that his father had used the market-making bustle of the 18th and 19th floors “as a shield” against any suspicion among those who entrusted their money to him.

“He would parade clients through the legitimate trading operation, then sit down with them in a conference room for an hour,” Andrew Madoff said of his father.

“The fact that they could physically see us in the trading room, working, might have lent to the air of legitimacy,” he said.

The brothers took home $3 million each in their peak earning years, Sandell wrote. His father also helped Andrew Madoff buy an apartment in New York City and a summer home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.

In 1992, Andrew Madoff married the former Debbie West, whom he had met through his brother’s wife. They had two daughters, Anne and Emily.

Cancer Research

His initial bout with cancer in 2003 inspired Madoff to give time and money to medical research. He joined the board of the Lymphoma Research Foundation, rising to chairman in 2008, and started an initiative that targeted his particular type of lymphoma.

After his cancer went into remission, he spread his wings beyond the father’s firm. He became the largest investor in Urban Angler, a fly-fishing store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, and took the lead in creating Madoff Energy LLC, an oil- and gas-exploration business formed with his brother and their cousin, Shana Madoff Swanson.

In September 2008, separated from his first wife, he became engaged to Catherine Hooper, an owner of Urban Angler and mother of a 3-year-old daughter, Sophie. He went to work with Hooper on the company she founded, Black Umbrella, which customizes emergency safety plans for families and individuals.

Proclaims Innocence

With Hooper and his mother, Madoff worked with author Sandell on the book that presented their story, and granted interviews to “60 Minutes,” NBC’s “Today Show” and other programs to emphasize their innocence, outrage and sorrow.

“What he did to me, my brother and my family is unforgivable,” Andrew Madoff said in the “60 Minutes” interview. “What he did to thousands of other people — destroyed their lives — I’ll never understand, and I’ll never forgive him for it. And I’ll never speak to him again.”

He told People magazine in 2013 that his feelings toward his father hadn’t changed.

“Even on my deathbed,” he said, “I will never forgive him for what he did.”