Ever since Bernard Madoff admitted to pulling off his $65 billion Ponzi scheme last December, numerous books have been published about his "investments." The Post looks at one new book, Madoff with the Money by Jerry Openheimer, and offers some shocking highlights: A high school classmate from Queens said he faked an oral book report on the fly and another added, "We'd carry on in school about how he was the dumbest white man we ever met in our lives -- excuse me for the pejorative. It's not fair to say he wasn't bright. The guy was a dummy in high school. If you said, 'Hey, Bernie, how are you?' his head would tilt to the side -- he had a nervous tick -- he'd squint, one eye would flutter, and he'd grunt, 'Hello.'" As for his later extracurricular activities at country clubs in Queens and Florida, "his golf scores were suspiciously and eerily as consistent as the returns he was promising." And because one of his employees would tell him, "Boss, you were nothing but a second lieutenant in the peacetime Army stationed stateside. When you spend a year in 'Nam as a grunt like I did, then tell me about hard times," Madoff even claimed he was a second sergeant in the finance division of the Army—but he really told the army he had an ulcer to get out of service.

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