Bernie Madoff and Ken “The Shrink” Weitzner: Birds of a Feather
American TV show "60 Minutes" ran a segment on convicted ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff on Sunday, and revealed how he and his wife unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide after he was exposed as a con man and arrested.
The story had an eerie similarity to the tale of Ken "The Shrink" Weitzner, the sleazy Internet entrepreneur who created a pair of websites devoted to gambling and who took his own life last year.
Many of the details of both men's controversial lives are coincidentally alike.
Such as:
*Both men were middle-aged Jews from New York.
*Both men attended college in the South--Madoff went to the University of Alabama and Weitzner went to Emory University in Atlanta.
*After college Madoff attended law school but never became a lawyer, while after college Weitzner attended medical school but never became a doctor.
*Both men were married and had two sons.
*Both men were arrogant and dishonest and had lots of enemies.
*Both men were con men obsessed with money.
*Both men were arrested and charged with crimes involving fraud--Madoff for his ponzi scheme and Weitzner for prescription fraud.
*Both men had financial success in life, but later attempted to kill themselves because of financial issues.
*Both men convinced their wives to join them in a double-suicide.
*Both men used pills in their respective suicide attempts.
Despite these similarities, there was one big difference between the two men--Madoff and his wife's suicide attempts failed, while Weitzner and his wife's suicide attempts, which also included using poison gas, were successful.
The comparisons between the two men's lives have another strange angle.
Weitzner was fascinated by the coincidences in the deaths of President Abraham Lincoln and President John F. Kennedy, who were both assassinated.
Thirty-five years after a list of Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences were published in a national magazine, Weitzner discovered the presidential coincidences and wrote an article about them for his website The Prescription, even though the issue had nothing to do with gambling or sports, mainstay subjects of the website.
Now the man who was intrigued by those strange coincidences is part of some strange coincidences himself.
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
