Turns out Bernie isn’t crazy about “Madoff.”
Bernie Madoff, the world’s most notorious Ponzi schemer — who is serving a 150-year federal prison sentence — panned the ABC miniseries about his crooked life, calling it “fiction” and “absurd.”
The disgraced 77-year-old money man, who orchestrated a decades-long, $20 billion Ponzi scheme that destroyed the lives of thousands of investors, took umbrage at the two-part “Madoff.”
The made-for-TV production aired earlier this month and featured Richard Dreyfuss in the lead role and Blythe Danner as his wife Ruth.
“I’m sure it is fruitless to enumerate the numerous fiction[s] and absurd mischaracterization[s] in the ABC movie,” he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News from his prison, the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.
“However I have never been one to turn the other cheek. I will just cover those incidents that have drawn queries.”
He had a number of beefs with series writers and producers.
A scene in which he struck his son was completely untrue, he said.
“I have NEVER slapped my son Mark,” wrote Madoff.
He insisted that his wife Ruth was never “an officer” in his firm.
The scam artist also didn’t like the way his brother Peter, played by Peter Scolari, was portrayed.
“My brother was improperly characterized as pathetic soul,” he wrote of Peter Madoff, who is serving 10 years behind bars.
“In reality, Peter was a brilliant and important leader of our market making and proprietary division. His outstanding creation of our technology platform was the envy of Wall Street.”
Madoff claimed he never had an affair with the CFO of a Jewish charity as portrayed in the movie and instead called her a “stalker.”
He also disagreed with the movie’s portrayal of his parents, as shamed by financial ruin and target of unflattering gossip by Queens neighbors.
“Madoff” painted Bernie as crushed by his dad’s financial failings, motivating his decades of crooked actions.
“In fact they were highly regarded in our community,” Madoff said of his parents.
“My father was the president of the temple.”