Thus I became one of some 99 limited partners in Caroline Investment Co. Phil told me that the partnership had consistently returned 15 percent to 16 percent a year, sometimes as much as 20 percent, and added that he had millions of his own money in the fund.

But he warned me that even he, with decades of experience, had no idea how the partnership managed to generate such high and steady returns.

Phil sent me a 73-page document, which I never read closely until after I learned about my link to Bernard Madoff. In the papers, I have learned that Caroline was a limited partner in the Lambeth Fund, operated entirely by Beverly Hills investor and arbitrage maven Stanley Chais, whom Phil had known for many years.

Chais, in turn, passed on the funds in Lambeth, Caroline and other partnerships to an unnamed brokerage and investment firm in New York. That firm, we learned since, was Madoff Investments; Chais had known Bernie Madoff for decades, but the name never appeared in any papers and was unknown to Phil.

For years, this opacity didn't matter. Like most small-time amateur investors, with a full work and family life, I had happily watched as my stake steadily grew. Even with 25 percent of the profits going to Chais and 5 percent to Phil for their administrative work, I averaged an annual net return of 10 percent to 14 percent.

This compounded rapidly, since I didn't need the income to make ends meet. Since my investment was in the form of an I.R.A. account, I didn't have to withdraw money until I was 70½ years old and started receiving mandatory minimum distributions.

I had about $150,000 accumulated in Caroline on Dec. 11, when I received an e-mail from Phil, which started, "I have some terrible news for us."

The shocking news, of course, was that Madoff had been arrested for fraud and that the many millions Phil and his daughter, a successful Los Angeles restaurateur, had been wiped out, as had Chais' Lambeth Co.—and my $150,000.

Sure the loss hurts, and with the simultaneous devaluation of our house, we have dropped plans to move into an upscale retirement community.

On the upside, our mortgage is paid off, I still earn money as a journalist, and I get Social Security. Although my retirement-savings plan with the University of California is sinking like a stone, I'm pretty confident that my wife and I will not go hungry.

I take some irrational satisfaction from the thought that, for the first time in my life, I'm in the company of so many millionaires and billionaires, and we are all going down together on the same financial Titanic.

The real losers, I'm afraid, will be the families of my three daughters, and my eight grandchildren, to whom I will now leave a rather meager monetary inheritance.