fraud

Kevin Bacon Recalls His Reaction After He and Kyra Sedgwick Lost Money in Madoff Scheme

"If something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true"

Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon
Robert Smith/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Kevin Bacon recently revealed his reaction to finding out he and wife Kyra Sedgwick lost money in one of history's largest Ponzi schemes.

In an episode of the "Smartless" podcast, hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, released Oct. 10, Bacon said that he and his wife lost "most of" their money when Bernie Madoff notoriously cheated thousands of investors out of billions of dollars.

"There's obvious life lessons there," Bacon said. "If something is too good to be true, it's too good to be true. And when something like that happens, you look at each other and you go, 'Well, that sucks,' and 'let's roll up our sleeves and get to work.'"

"'We made it this far. Our kids are healthy. We're healthy. Let's look at what we have that's good. We can still both work,'" Bacon continued of his mindset while speaking to Sedgwick.

Acknowledging that a natural reaction to the event is anger, the 64-year-old stressed that there were a lot of people who were "much worse off" than they were, like those who lost entire retirement funds.

When asked if they got the money back, Bacon said yes, but noted that "it's a complicated thing to explain." He said they got a portion of the money back and more from the lawsuit, adding that they had to change the way they viewed their investments.

"The thing about it is that it looks like a certain amount of money, right? There's the money that you put into something and there's the money that you, in theory, have gotten, accrued with interest over the years. But that's not real. That's just a number that was on a piece of paper," he said. "It was not a real thing."

Bacon and Sedgwick weren't the only two impacted by the Ponzi scheme. Madoff's other victims included names like Steven Spielberg, New York Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz and L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencour, as well as some small-time investors who invested their life savings.

“There were so many people who effectively treated him like a bank and kept their entire life savings with him, so when it was all revealed to be a sham, people were not able to live their lives anymore,” said Matthew Schwartz, the former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who led the investigation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.

In April 2021, Madoff died in prison at the age of 82. At the time, he was 12 years into serving a 150-year prison sentence relating to fraud charges.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

Copyright Today Digital Originals
Contact Us