As feds investigated Ruth and Bernie Madoff after he pleaded guilty in 2009 to orchestrating a decades-long, $65 billion Ponzi scheme, the disgraced financier’s wife plunged into a spiral of illegal drug use, wandering around her apartment stoned and guzzling thousands of dollars worth of wine from the family’s collection, according to a source.
“Ruth had a network in place to deliver pot up to the apartment,” a source told Page Six of life inside the couple’s posh duplex penthouse at 133 E. 64th St. “If she didn’t have anything to smoke it in, she would order someone out to a bodega for rolling papers because she felt unsafe leaving the apartment herself.”
“After Ruth smoked up on their rooftop patio, she’d walk around munching on bags of Funyuns or other types of chips,” added the source.
It was during this time that Ruth — who married the former NASDAQ chairman in 1959 when she was just 18 — was drowning her sorrows in the couple’s collection of high-end wine.
“Both Ruth and Bernie were drinking thousands and thousands of dollars worth of wine from their cellar almost every night,” explained the source. “I think they figured it was better to drink it than let the government take it away.”
As Ruth, 74, numbed the pain brought on by her husband’s lies, she was also busy preventing the government from confiscating mementos of the family’s life by destroying numerous credit cards, home videos and family photos, the source claimed.
While Bernie was under house arrest inside their $14.5 million Upper East Side apartment for three months, his life was constantly threatened by scorned clients duped out of their life savings.
“Bernie would walk around in a bulletproof vest under his clothes,” said the source. “Everything that went into the apartment would be searched to make sure there wasn’t a bomb — even pizza deliveries.”
The 77-year-old was sentenced to a 150-year prison term in June 2009 and is currently incarcerated at a federal facility in North Carolina.
Following a two-night “Madoff” movie special on ABC this week, a documentary chronicling the former financier’s life behind bars, called “Madoff: After the Fall,” airs Thursday night at 10, hosted by ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross.
“Bernie’s sort of made peace with his lot in life. He’s considered a big shot in prison. They go to him for stock tips,” said Ross.
Ruth now lives in a 989-square-foot apartment in Connecticut and drives a modest Toyota Prius after the government allowed her to keep a $2.5 million fraction of the billions her husband once had in the bank.
While the Madoffs are still married and in contact, it’s reportedly Bernie who calls — never Ruth.
The former socialite lost son Mark in 2010 to suicide and son Andrew in 2014 to cancer.