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Madoff son found hanged in New York (Roundup)

Dec 12, 2010, 1:43 GMT

New York - The eldest son of convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff was found dead Saturday in his New York apartment, after apparently committing suicide.

Mark Madoff, 45, was found by his father-in-law, the New York Post reported, two years to the day his father was arrested for the largest fraud in US history.

Mark Madoff's two-year-old child was with him in the apartment. His wife and the couple's other son were in Florida at the time. He reportedly sent an e-mail to his wife before his death asking someone to come by and check on their son.

'Mark Madoff took his own life today,' Martin Flumenbaum, the man's lawyer, said in a statement. 'This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy.'

The statement said Madoff was 'an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo.'

The Times quoted police sources as saying Madoff's body was found hanging from its neck by a dog leash attached to a pipe in the ceiling of the apartment.

Mark and his younger brother Andrew worked for their father's brokerage firm, but reportedly did not know about the snowball scheme which defrauded Americans of more than 60 billion dollars. They turned in their father after he revealed the scheme to them.

The brothers had recently faced lawsuits from the trustee attempting to recover assets for their father's victims. He was also reportedly upset over speculation that criminal charges might still be filed against him.

Bernard Madoff, 72, is currently serving a 150-year-prison sentence for fraud.

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