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Kevin Bacon, the actor arguably most famous for Footloose and Apollo 13, has revealed that he and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, had invested and lost “most” of their money in a Ponzi scheme.
Bacon told the SmartLess podcast, hosted by actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, that he had fallen victim to Bernie Madoff’s $50bn fraudulent scheme years ago.
Madoff, founder of the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, admitted in late 2008 that the wealth management arm of his business was an elaborate multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, later confirmed to be the biggest one in history.
He defrauded thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars over the course of at least 17 years and has since died in prison.
Bacon was just one of the many who fell victim to his scheme which attracted investors by claiming to generate large, steady returns through an investing strategy called split-strike conversion, a legitimate trading strategy.
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However, Madoff instead deposited client funds into a single bank account that he used to pay existing clients who wanted to cash out.
Bacon told the podcast: “There’s obvious life lessons there. You know, if something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.
“When something like that happens, you know, you look at each other, then you go, ‘Well, that sucks. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work,’ you know?
“Certainly, you get angry and stuff, but I have to say that there were a lot of people who were much worse off than we were.
“Old people, people whose retirement funds were completely decimated. There’s always going to be somebody that’s going to have it a lot worse than you.”
Fortunately, he was able to get a “portion” of his money back at a later date but will no doubt be very wary of any future investments.
Currently, Bacon and his wife have a reported net worth of $45m (£41m), according to CelebrityNetWorth.com.
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