Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me

Sheryl Weinstein met Bernie Madoff in 1988 when she was approaching forty. At the time, she was a successful CPA and head of a major charitable organization, navigating a rocky marriage. Madoff, a prominent Wall Street figure, began pursuing her. She asked him to move slowly, and over the next five years their relationship developed through business lunches, hotel dinners, and private encounters that felt deeply satisfying to both. Weinstein was cautious about investing her money until the SEC cleared Madoff in 1992. After that, she committed fully—emotionally and financially—to their twenty-year secret relationship. Madoff once told her casually, "I'm not to be trusted," words whose significance she would only later understand. This memoir examines Madoff through the perspective of someone who knew him intimately. While other accounts focus on the scale of his fraud, Weinstein's account reveals the private man behind the public figure. She describes a relationship that provided both parties something missing in their own lives, ultimately ending in devastation when the truth emerged.