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Three South Florida victims of Bernard L. Madoff tell their stories

By Brittany Levine, The Miami Herald, Source: MCT Business News

Jul. 6--The human toll in the Bernard L. Madoff scandal stretches from England to California, but few places have been hit harder than South Florida.

Three local residents, who are victims, offered their own variations on a theme of fraud and deceit in the days after Madoff was sentenced to 150 years for the long-running Ponzi scheme:

RICHARD SPRING

About 20 years ago, Bernie Madoff sat next to Richard Spring, of Boca Raton, on a New York subway. The two chatted about investments.

Now Spring wishes they never met.

Spring, 70, invested most of his savings with Madoff, according to his attorney Kenneth Lipman. The former stockbroker told his wife, his cousins, and his friends to invest with Madoff, too. He thought it was a safe bet, and for years he saw his investments grow by leaps and bounds.

Then it all crumbled as federal investigators exposed the massive Ponzi scheme. Spring has since become a virtual hermit, rarely leaving the house. He doesn't like to talk about his loss because he's "ashamed" he got his friends and family involved, Lipman said.

"It's been a tremendous blow to him. He used to be an optimistic, happy person. Not anymore," Lipman said.

He's cut back on spending, especially on luxuries such as his golf membership. His wife is ill and he has to pay her medical bills.

"Like everyone else, he thought he had a great deal of money that he could live off of for the remainder of his natural life," Lipman said. "But he's a changed man."

GUIDO PARENTE

It was his cousin, Bernie Madoff's longtime secretary, who convinced Guido Parente to invest. He said he ended up losing $1.2 million.

Parente calls himself a "hands-on kind of guy" who "never understood how shuffling money around made more money." But Annette Bongiorno, his cousin through marriage, always bragged about her boss' stellar investments.

So Parente, who owns a glass manufacturing company in Plantation, got hooked. His daughter, who owns a children's gym in Fort Lauderdale, also invested $100,000 with Madoff.

Bongiorno, he said, made a commission off the investments. She could not be reached for a comment.

Parente, 66, planned to retire last year and spend time with his family in Benevento, a small town in southern Italy known for its yellow liqueur and hazelnut candy.

But he's back to work. Since the Madoff scheme unraveled, he has been rebuilding his savings and has a "safe" Morgan Stanley account.

Parente's hobby is building big houses with marble floors and Tuscan-style roofs. With his extra cash, he would build million-dollar homes on acre lots in Plantation. A few years ago, he sold a house and planned to pay off other mortgages with the profit.

But Bongiorno, 60, convinced him to invest it with Madoff, he said. The slow real-estate market has stalled the sale of the 7,000-square-foot house with an asking price of $2.9 million, and Parente is stuck paying the mortgage.

LORI SIROTKIN

Lori Sirotkin invested more than $1 million, including her children's college funds, with Bernie Madoff. And now the 52-year-old's world has been turned upside down.

She moved recently to Boca Raton from New Jersey to be closer to her mother. Her father died earlier this year. She's divorced, receives no alimony and is currently looking for a job in the medical profession.

Back in New Jersey she tried to cut costs. Only one light was allowed per room. She turned down the thermostat and layered her two teenage daughters in sweaters. If her daughters needed new clothes, "they just had to squeeze into" the old ones.

"I was broke," she said. "My kids grew up thinking they could go to whatever college, whatever graduate school they wanted. Now I'm praying for scholarships."

She said she knew nothing about finances -- her husband took care of the books -- but she trusted Madoff.

Recently, she joined a Madoff Google group, an online network of victims who share information. She's learning about finances and trying to protect herself for the future.

She has no retirement fund because she has always worked part-time.

For now, she waits for payment from the Securities Investor Protection Corp., the government-chartered corporation that compensates customers of failed brokerages for up to $500,000.

"When the money comes through, I'll be able to sleep at night," she said.

"Right now, I'm still very scared."

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