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Everyone was dumbfounded. His legitimate business had flourished for 36 years, skilfully built up from trading over-the-counter penny stocks to a firm with 200 employees and a glassy Midtown office. He did not need the money. At his trial in 2009 he called his giant fraud a “problem”, something out of his control.
所有人都目瞪口呆。他的“合法生意”如火如荼地开展了36年，从买卖场外的低价股票到拥有200名员工、在市中心拥有一间高档、气派的公司，都是通过高深的手段建立起来的。他不需要钱。在2009年的审判中，他称自己的巨额欺诈是一个“问题”，是他也无法掌控的问题。
But that hardly squared with a scam he had been conducting, in its tiniest details, since the 1960s.
但这与他自20世纪60年代以来一直在实施的骗局(哪怕是最微小的细节)并不相符。
And the scam itself did not fit with the Bernie his employees thought they knew, treating them in his quiet, fussy way like family;
而且，员工也不相信，他们认识的麦道夫会做出这个骗局，他对待员工如何家人一般，和蔼又较真。
or whom his wife Ruth thought she knew, after 50 years; or with the industrious, outgoing student who had worked his way through college by installing lawn-sprinklers on the side;
就连相伴50载的妻子露丝也认为丈夫不是这种人；他曾是一个勤奋、开朗的学生，通过安装草坪洒水器来勤工俭学；
or that affable guy at the country club who would softly suggest, over supper, that his closed fund might have room for just one more.
他还是乡村俱乐部的那个和蔼的家伙，会在晚餐时温柔地建议，他的封闭式基金也许还能再“招新”。
Not being a man of many words, he said little to explain himself after his arrest. His talk of “torment” and “horrible guilt” was given short shrift by the judge, who sentenced him to the maximum possible, 150 years.
麦道夫话不多，被逮捕后很少为自己开脱。他所说的“内心折磨”和“可怕的罪行”也被法官忽视了，他被判了法律可能的最高刑期——150年。
His sorrow, the judge thought, was mostly for the more than $170bn in assets that were forfeited by court order: for the $7m Manhattan penthouse, the power boats, the private jet.
法官认为，他之所以难过主要是因为法院下令没收了1700多亿美元资产:700万美元的曼哈顿顶层公寓、汽艇和私人飞机。
The accused himself remarked that the fraud had gone on and on because he could not accept the fact that for once in his life, he had failed. In other words, he could not bear to tell his clients that he was not a magician. So he ruined them instead.
被告自己说，欺诈行为一直在持续，因为他无法接受自己这辈子失败了一次的事实。换句话说，他不忍心告诉客户自己不是万能的魔法师。所以他选择毁了他们。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
