In God We Trust

Eleanor Squillari couldn't believe it when her boss, entrepreneur Bernie Madoff, was arrested on charges of large-scale fraud in 2008. She had been his secretary for 25 years, and he was like family to her. But like many other Madoff employees, she had no idea of what had been going on the infamous 17th floor of the New York Lipstick Building. Together with the rest of the world, Squillari learned that Madoff and some of his cohorts had swindled their clients out of 65 billion dollars through a so-called Ponzi scheme. She was there when the FBI stormed the building, and she picked up the first phone calls from the victims – often ordinary people who had lost their hard-earned savings forever. “I’ll never forget those phone calls,” says Squillari. She realized how close she had been to the eye of the storm, and decided to help the authorities in their investigation. She turned a room in her house into what she called “the war room,” and embarked on a crusade to uncover the truth about her former employer. “I became obsessed,” she says about those early days. “It was the first thing I thought of when I got up in the morning, and the last thing before going to sleep at night.” Slowly, the true scale of Madoff's swindle becomes clear, and we see that it went far beyond only the Ponzi scheme. Looking back, Squillari realizes what kind of person Madoff really is. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)