Bernie Madoff

Bernie Madoff orchestrated the largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding thousands of investors of sums that reached toward sixty-five billion dollars. Once chairman of the NASDAQ and head of a respected market-making firm, he ran his asset-management arm as, in his own words, one big lie. He built the deception over decades, was arrested in December 2008 after confessing to his sons, pleaded guilty to eleven felonies, and was sentenced in 2009 to 150 years in prison. He died in federal custody in 2021. The wreckage was not only financial: one son took his own life two years to the day after the arrest.

His chart carried a doubled Taurus signature, Sun and Moon both in the sign of the bull, the earthy Venusian temperament that fixes on money, assets and the pricing of things, and that hardens into immovable stubbornness. Both luminaries sat in the ninth house of trust, reputation and the wider world, and Leo rose as a magnetic, commanding mask. A natal signature describes temperament only. It never explains away, and never excuses, the deliberate choice to steal from those who trusted him.