Just when you thought all the slimy details of Bernard Madoff's past were out in the open, a woman, who claims to be his former lover, has emerged with a book.
The book's title, "Madoff's Other Secret: Sex, Money, Bernie, and Me," could spell more trouble for locked-down Bernie and his wife Ruth, who stood by her man and took a beating for keeping mum on his illegal antics over the course of their marriage. Author, Sheryl Weinstein, who discussed the book on ABC's Good Morning America, Tuesday, the day her book hit shelves, claims that the Ponzi man loved her and only avoided divorce because he feared undergoing financial scrutiny.
"I knew instantly he was attracted to me," Weinstein gushes in her tell-all book. "He gave me a welcoming smile, a smile I'll never forget. It wasn't lewd and lascivious, but slightly seductive and almost happy."
Weinstein says the two met in 1988 when she was overseeing a financial transaction as CFO of Hadassah, a Jewish women's charity that his Ponzi-scheme eventually robbed. At the time, she was 39 and was sure when Madoff entered their first meeting "he was expecting a group of elderly Jewish women," and she was "certainly an exception to the case."
Their relationship, she says, lasted 21 years, though their sexual relationship, in which she learned he was "a good kisser," but not so well-endowed, only lasted a year and a half.
"He really got into it more emotionally than he expected to," Weinstein said on the morning talk show. "I think he loved me and was very afraid of that type of connection."
Whatever feelings the two may have had for each other did not prevent Weinstein from urging a long prison sentence for her former lover who she characterized as "that terror, that monster, that horror, that beast ... an equal-opportunity destroyer," after claiming his Ponzi scheme ruined the lives of her family, including her husband of 37 years, her parents and her son.
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As for Ruth, her attorney Peter Chavkin told The Associated Press that she knows nothing of this alleged affair, and said this could prove that his client really didn't know about his financial crimes. This shows that "there are some things that some spouses — however close they are — do not share with each other."
Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence for orchestrating a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.
