So did Renaissance sell off its stake in Madoff? Not quite. They cut their stake in half. They hedged their bets. Five years later, after Madoff had been exposed as a fraud—the mastermind of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history—federal investigators sat down with Nat Simons and asked him to explain why. “I never, as the manager, entertained the thought that it was truly fraudulent,” Simons said. He was willing to admit that he didn’t understand what Madoff was up to, and that Madoff smelled a little funny. But he wasn’t willing to believe that he was an out-and-out liar. Simons had doubts, but
...more
