[Photo:  CNNMoney / DOJ]

Now you can hear Bernie Madoff try to rationalize the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.

Eugene Soltes, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who wrote white-collar crime book “Why They Did It,” has released a rare audio clip from his phone interviews with the jailed Ponzi schemer.

“You start out, at least in my part, not exactly sure what I wanted to do in life, other than being a success,” Madoff said in the audio clip posted on Business Insider.

 

“I built my confidence up to a level where I, sort of, felt that - you know - there was nothing I couldn’t attain,” the fraudster said from federal prison in Butner, North Carolina.

Soltes said he spoke with Madoff every Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. over several years. “He’s brilliant, he’s cordial, in many ways very friendly,” the author said of Madoff.

Madoff was arrested on 12/11/08 for bilking thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. He eventually pleaded guilty to fraud charges and was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison.

“I, sort of, rationalized that what I was doing was OK, you know,” Madoff said in the interview.

“I wasn’t going to hurt anybody. It was a temporary thing and because of the success that I’ve had and the money I’ve made for people, I sort of felt, it was just,” Madoff boasts.

Despite saying he wasn’t going to hurt anyone, Madoff brought financial ruin to hundreds of investors, and his own son Mark hanged himself two years after the scheme was uncovered.

[Bernie Madoff Recording]