Reply #4: The wife knew what was going on...

[acmavm]

<snip>

While Bernie spent his freshman year at the University of Alabama—at that time, some say, an easier entrance portal for students who couldn’t get accepted into eastern colleges—Ruth passed the entrance requirements for Queens College. “She graduated and had a job on the stock market in Manhattan. She was a very smart girl and a very good student.” Once Bernie had gotten through Hofstra University and attended Brooklyn Law School for a year, the couple fled Queens and never looked back. In 1960 they began working together at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, which Bernie founded with his savings of $5,000 from lifeguarding and installing sprinkler systems. From the start, Ruth’s office was right next to her husband’s.


http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/madoff200904?currentPage=3

edit: she was in on it in the beginning, she went everywhere he went (the article said she never let him out of her sight), and she was taking money out as Bernie was confessing his crimes.

She knew.