News has emerged that the sister and brother-in-law of late disgraced United States financier Bernie Madoff have died in an apparent murder-suicide.

Eighty-six-year-old Sondra Wiener and her husband, Marvin Wiener, were reportedly found dead in their Florida home last Thursday (February 17). An investigation is under way.

According to BocaNewsNow.com, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the investigation but would not identify the decedents.

Madoff, who died last year, was for decades a major player on Wall Street before being arrested in 2008 and pleading guilty in 2009 to running a vast Ponzi scheme that defrauded as many as 37,000 people in more than 100 countries out of as much as US$65 billion.

Among his victims were celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Kevin Bacon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel.

At the time of his death in a North Carolina prison last April, Madoff was serving a 150-year prison sentence.

His wife, Ruth Madoff, now 80, has claimed that she and her husband carried out a failed suicide attempt after his Ponzi scheme was exposed.

However the Madoffs have seen other tragic deaths in their family since the patriarch’s arrest with elder son Mark Madoff found hanging inside his New York City apartment in 2010 at age 46, and younger son, Andrew Madoff, dying of cancer in 2014 at age 48.