Kevin Bacon is considered by many to be the greatest actor to have never received an Academy Award nomination, although he has won a Golden Globe. Bacon has starred in a series of brilliant cinematic features, including JFK, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13 and the HBO TV film Taking Chance. However, the actor very nearly had all his success in the film industry come to nothing when he and his wife, Kyra Sedwick, lost a fortune in the notorious Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Bernie Madoff – then chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange.
In 2008, Madoff was arrested just a day after his sons Andrew and Mark informed the authorities that the asset management branch of his finance firm was a giant Ponzi scheme – the biggest in American history, valued at $64.8 billion. A few months later, in 2009, he pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and was sentenced to 150 years in prison, although he died in 2021.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent affair that attracts new investors while paying profits to early investors with funds from the new ones. The system works by convincing investors that their profits come from legitimate business affairs rather than from what the new investors provide.
Kevin Bacon was one of the investors stung by his unawareness of the reality of Madoff’s business. “There’s obvious life lessons there. You know, if something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true,” he said (via The Independent), adding: “Certainly,…
