The late and notorious Wall Street swindler Bernie Madoff was the architect of the largest Ponzi scheme in history (to the tune of some $64 billion) and ruined thousands of lives before he was finally brought to justice. Madoff made for such a hiss-worthy villain in such an incredible, Shakespearean story that two Academy Award winners jumped at the opportunity to play him: Richard Dreyfuss in the 2016 miniseries “Madoff” and Robert De Niro in the 2017 film “The Wizard of Lies.”
Now you can add the name of one Joseph Scotto to the list, as he portrays Madoff in the four-part Netflix documentary series “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street” — though Scotto, who with the help of hair and makeup bears an uncanny resemblance to Madoff, doesn’t have any lines. In this detail-oriented, number-crunching, thoroughly researched work from the acclaimed and prolific documentarian Joe Berlinger (“Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes,” “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich,” “Murder Among the Mormons”), Scotto is seen in numerous re-creations, either as an enigmatic mystery man with a chilling smile who says nothing, or a shadowy figure moving through Wall Street, alternately charming and bullying his employees, including his brother Peter and his sons Andrew and Mark.
