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

Nobody knew Bernie like I did, and nobody knows about me…

Sheryl Weinstein met Bernie Madoff when she was just shy of forty, and went on to have a twenty-year secret, intimate relationship with the man now known as an evil mastermind, a villain of the greatest proportions.

It was 1988 and Sheryl was facing a huge dilemma. Bernie Madoff was paying her a great deal of attention. She was in the midst of a rocky marriage and feeling vulnerable, when the powerful Wall Street mogul began making overtures. As a successful CPA and head of a major charitable organization, she had a lot to lose. She directed him to take things slowly.

Over the next five years, there were business meetings over lunch, followed by intimate dinners in hotel rooms and finally, private moments that for a time seemed intensely satisfying to them both. “I’m not to be trusted,” he once told her casually. She ignored it, having no idea how prophetic those words would be. After all, her relationship with Bernie was passionate and profound. She felt desirable. She was the one nobody knew about, with the window into the real man. So careful about investing her money, when the SEC cleared him in 1992 she decided to get in all the way--with her heart, her soul--and her financial future.

Sheryl was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She couldn't possibly have imagined the devastation that would befall her. Learning the truth was shattering on so many levels.

Many books are being written about the scale of Madoff's fraud, but until now, nothing has shown the man through private eyes. Sheryl Weinstein's riveting story reveals a Madoff who will shock and surprise you. From the boardroom to the bedroom, in each other, the two found something that had been lacking in their own lives. It's a story with tragic overtones--a drama that only now could find a devastating conclusion.