Madoff: Investors 'had to know' about fraud

Convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff says investors "had to know" he was engaged in illegal activity, but failed to act on their hunches.

In the first public interview since his arrest in December 2008, he told the New York Times: "The attitude was sort of ‘if you are doing something wrong, we don't want to know'. Banks and funds were complicit in one form or another. "I am reading more now about how suspicious they were, more than I ever realised at the time," he said from the North Carolina jail where he is serving a 150-year term. His comments will fuel cases brought against financial institutions by Irving Picard, the trustee fighting to recover Madoff's victims' money. Madoff says he had furnished Picard with "i...