On Monday's episode of the podcast Smartless by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes, award-winning actor Kevin Bacon spoke about how he and his wife actor Kyra Sedgwick lost "most of [their] money in Madoff."
Bernie Madoff, who died last year in prison, was sentenced to 150 years after pleading guilty in 2009 to 11 federal crimes, including securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
Madoff—once hailed as a financial genius—admitted to operating the largest private Ponzi scheme in history. At the time of his exposure and arrest, Bacon and Sedgwick were in the news as one of his more famous clients.
Madoff's fraud ran upwards of $65 billion impacting over 40,000 victims who were prominent figures in business and media, hardworking everyday people and nonprofit charities.
In addition to Bacon and Sedgwick, actor Zsa Zsa Gabor, Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation, Hollywood executive Jefferey Katzenberg, actor John Malkovich, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and broadcaster Larry King were all bilked by Madoff.
On the podcast, Bacon shared:
"There's obvious life lessons there - if something is too good to be true, it's too good to be true."
Bacon also sympathized with others who invested and put his own loss into perspective:
"Certainly, you get angry and stuff, but I have to say there were a lot of people who were much worse off than we were - old people, people whose retirement funds were completely decimated."
"So there's always going to be somebody that's going to have it a lot worse than you."
Bacon stated although they experienced a tremendous financial loss, he and Sedgwick did what they needed to do:
"When something like that happens, you look at each other and go, 'Well that sucks,' and, 'Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work.'"
"We've made it this far, our kids are healthy, we're healthy, you know?"
"Let's look at what we have that's good. We can both still work."
A portion of the podcast is highlighted in the video below.
Many Facebook users shared their support for the actor.
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Bacon also shared he and Sedgwick were able to recover "a portion" of the money, then quipped:
"I think people will be not happy to hear me whining about money."
According to madoffvictimfund.com, $4 billion has been returned to more than 40,000 victims.
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