Ponzi king Madoff's secretary reveals his lust for ladies and money

New York, May 6 (ANI): Ponzi king Bernie Madoff's long time secretary, Eleanor Squillari, has revealed that her boss enjoyed "frequent massages" during work, hurled vicious insults at underlings and physically fell to pieces as his scheme unraveled.

"Bernie could be incredibly generous and incredibly horrible," Squillari, says in an explosive new Vanity Fair article.

In what amounts to the first shocking, inside look at the day-to-day operations of Madoff's Manhattan investment firm, Squillari talks about her boss' lusty penchant for the ladies as he bilked billions from clients.

Wife Ruth "kept an eagle eye on him when he was around young attractive women," Squillari said -- for good reason.

The 70-year-old Madoff "had a roving eye and . . . a habit of getting frequent massages," the grossed-out secretary said.

"One day, I caught him scouting the escort pages that run alongside pictures of scantily clad women in the back of a magazine," she said. "He straightened up in his chair, startled, and said, 'I'm just looking!' "

Madoff had scribbled about a dozen numbers for "masseuses" -- listed under "M" -- in his address book, leading his secretary to warn him that if he ever lost the book and someone found it, "they're going to think you're a pervert."

He would sometimes schedule a "massage" in the middle of a working day and claim he was merely taking a walk, Squillari said.

"He'd return an hour or so later, always in a much better mood," she said.

Squillari told Vanity Fair that Madoff would playfully "try to pat me on the ass" and say, "You know it excites you" when he would exit his office bathroom while still zipping his fly.

He'd add, "Oh, you know you're crazy about me," she said.

"He liked to find your weak spot and poke at you with his sarcastic humor. He had to take everything way too far," the annoyed secretary said.

Madoff -- who frequently used to refer to himself as "one of the most powerful men on Wall Street" -- got downright "nasty" when stress got to him, Squillari said. "You look terrible . . . You're gaining weight . . . You're stupid," Madoff would sneer to workers, according to Squillari.

But Madoff never had a bad word for employees on the 17th floor of the Lipstick Building on the East Side, where the nuts and bolts of Madoff's Ponzi scheme were based, the secretary said.

"He would never reprimand anyone on 17 -- they were untouchable," Squillari said.

The unraveling of Madoff's 65 billion dollar scam came to a head in early December. As it became clear to her uber-controlling boss that he couldn't stop his world from crashing down, he started to physically buckle, too, the secretary said.

"His voice, always so strong, had become . . . almost inaudible," Squillari said. "If he wasn't staring into space, he was looking down, working on figures." (ANI)