Officers responded to the home of Bernie Madoff’s sister, Sondra Wiener, 87, and her husband Marvin, 90 when they made the grisly discovery inside their home inside Boynton Beach’s Valencia Lakes, an adult gated community in Palm Beach County, Florida.
BOYNTON BEACH, FL – The sister of infamous fraudster Bernie Madoff and her husband were discovered dead last week in what Florida authorities referred to in a news release on Sunday as an apparent murder-suicide.
Sondra Wiener, 87, and her husband Marvin, 90 – both of whom were victims of Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme – were found dead of gunshot wounds in their home in Boynton Beach, Florida on Thursday, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
The news release noted that officers were responding to a 12:55 p.m. 911 call to 11200 Barca Blvd, Boynton Beach, when they made the grisly discovery, although it did not state which of the two had carried out the murder-suicide; the medical examiner will ultimately determine the cause of death, police say.
“Upon arrival, deputies located an elderly female and male deceased from a gunshot wound,” the release said. “Detectives from the Violent Crimes Division arrived on scene to investigate further. After further investigation it appears to be a murder-suicide.”
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The family has enacted Marsy’s Law in Marvin Wiener’s name, the sheriff’s office said, which is a law that protects crime victims by keeping identifying information confidential.
Bernie Madoff’s sister, Sondra Wiener, and her husband were found dead on Thursday in their home in Florida, in what the authorities said was an apparent murder-suicide. https://t.co/iXXP5J8rUA
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 21, 2022
Sondra Wiener is the sister of reviled financier Bernard Madoff, who died in 2021 at the age of 82 while serving a 150 year federal prison sentence for orchestrating the single largest financial fraud in history, a massive Polzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars.
Being Madoff’s sister did not shield her from her brother’s illegal financial proclivities; reports say that Sondra and Marvin Wiener lost $3 million to his Ponzi scheme before he was arrested in 2009.
A number of tragedies followed Madoff after he pled guilty and was sentenced; his son Mark, 48, who had turned in his father after he discovered the Ponzi scheme he had been running, hung himself in 2010. His other son, Andrew, 48 – who had also turned in his father – passed away from mantle-cell lymphoma in 2014. Both sons had expressed disgust and betrayal by their father’s crimes before they died.