Robert De Niro received his first Emmy nomination for playing which financial crook?

Robert De Niro received his first Emmy nomination for playing the financial crook Bernie Madoff (1938 - 2021). De Niro was in the May 2017 HBO film "The Wizard of Lies"; De Niro had the role of the American fraudster and financier who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in US history, worth about $64.8 billion.

Madoff was a money manager and pioneer in electronic trading who ran a very large Ponzi scheme, which likely ran for decades. He had also been the chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange in the early 1990s. Because of his actions, he defrauded thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars. In 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for money laundering, securities fraud, and several other felonies. In addition, he had to forfeit $170 billion.

As of December 2018, the Madoff Victims Fund had distributed more than $2.7 billion to 37,011 victimized investors all around the world.

Madoff was born in Queens, NY and began dating his future wife, Ruth (née Alpern), when both were in their early teens. On the phone from prison, Madoff told Steve Fishman, a journalist and host of an original audible series on Madoff titled "Ponzi Supernova" that his father, who ran a sporting goods store, went out of business due to steel shortages during the Korean War: "You watch that happen; you see your father, who you idolize, build a big business and then lose everything." Fishman noted, "Madoff was determined to achieve the 'lasting success' his father hadn't."