Sonja Kohn, an Austrian bank executive who helped raise funds that invested with Bernard Madoff, is hard to ignore in Vienna’s small financial community.

With her heavy jewellery and her loud voice, Ms Kohn built up a reputation in Vienna over the years as a successful money manager. She was born and raised in Vienna in a traditional, but not religious Jewish family. In the 1970s, she and her husband moved to Milan and later Switzerland. Her life changed when she moved to New York in the 1980s. The family became orthodox and settled in Monsey, NY, a suburb with a large orthodox community.