Bernie Madoff Son Suicide

The son of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff is dead.

Mark Madoff was found dead of a suspected suicide in his Manhattan apartment early Saturday morning, CNN News reports.

The body of Madoff, a husband and father of a two-year-old boy, was discovered hanging from a ceiling pipe with a dog leash, authorities say. His young son was asleep in a room nearby, but it was Mark’s father-in-law who made the gruesome discovery.

“Mark Madoff took his own life today,” Madoff’s attorney Martin Flumenbaum said in a statement. “This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy. Mark was an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo. We are all deeply saddened by this shocking turn of events.”

The younger Madoff’s death came on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest on federal fraud charges, part of the biggest and longest-running Ponzi scheme America has ever seen. It was Mark, 36, who turned his dad in to the authorities, but he never escaped suspicion that he too was involved in the scam. On Friday, The Wall Street’s Dealbreaker Blog reported that Mark was depressed and frustrated to the point of tears at his inability to get hired at another investment firm.

Bernie Madoff is currently serving a 150-year prison sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina.

Mark’s death is the third suicide linked to the Madoff Scandal. An investor and a German soldier, who both lost their life’s savings in the Ponzi scheme, took their own lives in 2008.