Levy—whose girlfriend, supermodel Carmen Dell’Orefice, would fly yoga antibes her life savings—and the prominent philanthropist Carl J. An elevator opening onto the mysterious 17th floor of the Lipstick Building, in Manhattan, where a small staff helped to manage Bernard Madoff’s exclusive investment fund. Over dinner in New York one night in January, I was airing my frustration concerning Bernard Madoff. Two days later, when I arrived at her Upper East Side apartment, Dell’Orefice was ready for me.

Still gorgeous at 77, she led me to her bedroom, where she had laid out on her king-size coverlet piles of intimate photographs, canceled checks, and reams of investment statements spelling out her relationship with Madoff. She had quite a story to tell. It began in the fall of 1993. Six years after the death of her fiancé, the legendary television impresario and talk-show host David Susskind, a neighbor introduced Carmen to Norman F. He instructed her to meet him at the office of Bernard L.

Madoff Investment Securities, in the Lipstick Building, the oval red-granite monolith at 53rd Street and Third Avenue designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. And there was a little man sitting behind a very big desk. I turned around and there was Norman, all six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-something pounds of him. Don’t worry, the money is there. Levy put it in your account.