Bernie Madoff is dead

 

CNBC

 Bernard Madoff, mastermind of the biggest investment fraud in U.S. history, ripping off tens of thousands of clients of as much as $65 billion, died Wednesday. He was 82.

His death at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, was confirmed by the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Madoff died apparently from natural causes, the AP reported earlier, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter. He would have turned 83 on April 29.

Madoff was serving a 150-year sentence at the prison, where he had been treated for what his attorney called terminal kidney disease. His request for compassionate release from prison was denied in June.

 He pleaded guilty in 2009 to a scheme that investigators said started in the early 1970s and defrauded more than 40,000 people in 125 countries over four decades by the time Madoff was busted on Dec. 11, 2008 — after his two sons turned him in. Victims included the famous — director Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon, former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel — and ordinary investors, like Burt Ross, who lost $5 million in the scheme.

Son-in law doesn't fall far from the tree

From CBS Local:

A son-in-law of former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was charged with defrauding investors out of $7 million in a Ponzi scheme, according to a federal complaint.

Marcello Trebitsch appeared in court in Manhattan on Monday night on one count of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud. He was released on bond. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine.

He is married to Michelle Trebitsch, Silver’s daughter. The former Democrat powerbroker stepped down from his leadership position after being indicted on corruption charges in January.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that Marcello Trebitsch, 37, of Brooklyn, told investors he would use their money to trade in securities through his investment fund and promised them double-digit returns with low risk. But only a portion of the money was invested and Trebitsch used the remainder for his own personal benefit and to repay other investors, the complaint said.

Is Meeks next to go?

From the NY Post:

The e-mail was flagged “Importance: High.” A top executive at the Stanford Financial Group wanted an answer.

“Have we an update on Antigua?” demanded Lionel C. Johnson, a senior VP.

“Greg Meeks and Ed Ahmad have both called again this afternoon inquiring about the status of Ahmad’s VIP-box invitations.”

The Feb. 19, 2008, e-mail, obtained by The Post, was addressed to Yolanda Suarez, chief counsel for the company run by now-disgraced billionaire banker Allen Stanford. It and other insistent messages during that period show Queens Rep. Gregory Meeks was determined to get his pal, Edul Ahmad, invited to a Caribbean cricket match so he could meet another Meeks buddy, Stanford.

The urgent pleas were made a year after Ahmad handed Meeks $40,000.

Stanford would also throw cash at the congressman a few months later -- hosting a lavish fund-raiser in St. Croix in July 2008, complete with Cristal champagne and caviar, that raised at least $13,800 for Meeks’ campaign committee.

Now the circle of friends threatens to become a circle of felons.

Stanford, 61, is awaiting trial on charges he engineered a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. Ahmad, 43, was indicted this summer in New York, accused of falsifying $50 million in loan applications. And Meeks, 57, is under investigation by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct for the $40,000 Ahmad payment and is at the center of a separate federal probe for his role in a Queens nonprofit that allegedly stiffed Hurricane Katrina victims.

Meeks, an eight-term congressman, has a penchant for hobnobbing with shady characters and had few qualms about accepting their cash -- or doing them favors.

Ackerman pushes Ponzi protection bill

From the Daily News:

If Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz are going to retain control of the Mets, and their family's fortune, their best hope may be legislation introduced last week by a New York congressman.

Rep. Gary Ackerman's bill would bar bankruptcy trustees such as Irving Picard, the Madoff trustee who filed a $1 billion lawsuit against the Mets owners in December, from suing investors victimized by a Ponzi scheme unless the trustee could prove they participated in the scam.

Under the Ponzi Scheme Investor Protection Act of 2011 sponsored by Ackerman (D-NY), the only investors who would face "clawback" litigation would be investors whom the trustee can legally establish were complicit in a Ponzi scheme or negligent investment professionals. Trustees are currently permitted to sue Ponzi scheme victims even if they did not have involvement or knowledge of the fraud - and the Mets' owners say they did not.

If Ackerman's bill passes, it would be applied retroactively, which means Picard would have to drop the suit against the Mets' owners or prove that Wilpon and Katz were complicit in Madoff's $64 billion scam.

The measure was sent to the House Financial Services Committee. Ackerman said it will be an uphill battle to win congressional approval for the bill.

"Whether rich people make money or lose money, they get no sympathy from the public," Ackerman said.

Mario gets into the act

From CBS:

Now batting in the legal mess involving Bernard Madoff and the Mets: Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo.

A federal bankruptcy judge in Manhattan appointed Cuomo on Thursday to serve as a mediator in a legal dispute between the Mets owners and the court-appointed trustee trying to recover money for victims of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

The trustee, Irving H. Picard, has accused Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon and affiliated Sterling Equities entities of making $300 million in fictitious profits from Madoff’s swindle and ignoring warnings that Madoff’s returns were implausible.

From WFAN:

Moody’s Investors Service says it has lowered its outlook on the company that operates Citi Field, citing the potential for pending litigation against the owners of the Mets.

The ratings firm said Thursday it cut the outlook on Queens Ballpark Co. LLC to “Negative,” but maintained its “Ba1″ rating on the company’s bonds.

Moody’s says the move reflects the potential that pending litigation against the owner of the Mets, Sterling Mets LP, could hurt attendance at the ballpark.

Meeks' pals include Ponzi schemer and dictator

From the Daily News:

Rep. Gregory Meeks has been a frequent flier to sun and sand with a little help from an unusual source - accused Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford.

The Queens Democrat, sometimes accompanied by his wife, Simone-Marie, took six trips to sun-drenched locales from Antigua to St. Lucia, courtesy of a Stanford nonprofit called the Inter-American Economic Council, records show.

Stanford, once listed by Forbes as one of the richest men in the world, was indicted in June, charged with fleecing investors in a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

The Miami Herald Monday quoted unnamed ex-Stanford employees as saying that in 2006, Stanford asked Meeks to retaliate against a turncoat Stanford executive in Venezuela who was accusing Stanford of fraud.

The workers said Stanford asked Meeks to call Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whom Meeks knew.

The employees say Stanford wanted Chavez to launch a criminal probe of the Venezuelan whistleblower, The Herald reported.

Meeks later traveled to Venezuela to seek Chavez's support in the war on drugs. The whistleblower was indicted a year later.

Records show Meeks has been a repeat guest of the nonprofit funded by Stanford, the Inter-American Economic Council. Barry Featherman, the group's president, did not return calls.

Since 2003, the group has spent at least $22,347 on airfare, hotels and meals for Meeks and his wife to various locales, usually for "business round tables," records show.

During a Jan. 11-15, 2006, trip to Montego Bay, Jamaica, Meeks and his wife stayed at the luxurious Ritz Carlton, running up $2,711 in lodging expenses, $5,365.46 on airfare, and $1,470 on meals. They flew in a Stanford jet.

Wilpon profited off Madoff scam?

From the NY Post:

Talk about getting caught in a jam. After watching his team go down to defeat this season, Mets owner Fred Wilpon now faces potential "clawback" suits for raking in nearly $50 million in phony profits from Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

The "Mets Limited Partnership" appears twice on a new list of 31 investors who took home more money from Madoff than they handed over to the mega scammer.

According to the chart compiled by Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard, the company -- reportedly linked to Wilpon through state incorporation records -- withdrew $570.5 million after investing $522.7 million in two separate Madoff accounts.

A spokesman for Picard didn't return a request for comment, but a former federal prosecutor told Bloomberg News that the trustee would be in "violation of his fiduciary duty" if he doesn't go after the excess dough.

Photo from the Daily News

Man wins lotto by playing Madoff's number

From the Times Ledger:

A 50−year−old Glendale man may be one of the few people in the five boroughs to win money, rather than lose it, from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Ralph Amendolaro, a construction worker who lives in Glendale, recently won the state Lottery’s Numbers game by playing the last three numbers of the disgraced investment adviser’s inmate number.

Amendolaro was inspired to play the last three digits of Madoff’s inmate number — 054 — after seeing his picture and number on the cover of a daily newspaper. He said he placed a $3 bet on the number for three days in a row, beginning March 13, and found out that he won $1,500 on March 15.

Madoff papers all over LIC

From the New Yorker:

For the past few weeks, forty-six cardboard boxes sat moldering on the waterfront in Long Island City, not far from where workers were reassembling the seventy-two-year-old neon Pepsi sign. The boxes were on Fifth Street, which dead-ends in Anable Basin, where a mastodon bone was dredged up more than a century ago when a creek was transformed into a barge slip. On a blustery day last week, old paperbacks, videotapes, and financial papers were spilling out of the boxes onto the street, to be scattered by the winds.

Among the pale-green ledger sheets and torn paperbacks were wads of “trade confirmations” from Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, most of them dated 1993. They all appeared to document sales and purchases of blue-chip stocks (three hundred and eighty-five shares of Exxon Corp. for $24,062.50; a hundred and seventy-five shares of “Disney Walt Prodtns” for $7,284.38), but some described purchases of shares in companies, like American International Group (a hundred and five shares for $9,423.75) and General Motors (a hundred and forty-five shares for $7,956.88), that nearly joined the mastodon in recent months.

The Madoff materials were discovered on February 16th by Matt Quigley, Muller’s landlord, who, fed up with the mess outside his building, decided to investigate. “I was looking for a name on the papers, to see if it was one of our tenants who dumped the garbage on the street,” Quigley said. When he saw the letterhead reading “Bernard L. Madoff,” he said, “I thought, I’ve heard that guy’s name before.”

Victims seek restitution from "Mini-Madoff"

From the Forum West:

Almost one month after the arrest of alleged Long Island con artist Nicholas Cosmo on federal mail fraud charges, local residents who invested in Agape World, Inc. are left wondering where their money went and if they will ever recover any of it.

While Cosmo’s business – which federal authorities say was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme that cheated 1,500 people out of about $370 million – was based on Long Island, it also had an office on Grand Avenue in Maspeth. That’s where many Queens residents went to invest their money in hopes of cashing on large returns.

Cosmo was arrested on January 26 following a FBI investigation, which culminated in raids of Agape’s Hauppauge, Jackson Heights and Maspeth offices. The company had promised investors the chance to cash in returns from bridge loans Agape provided to other individuals and companies. Instead, authorities say that just $10 million of $370 million provided by investors was ever loaned out. The rest is believed to have been squandered by Cosmo, who is being held in federal custody.

As the case slowly moves forward, hundreds of local investors have begun banding together in an effort to recover any of the lost money. “We have two objectives – to get information so that we feel connected to the process, and secondly to give each other hope,” said Dom DiColandrea of West Babylon, who has helped mobilize a group of victims and posts updates on a victim’s blog, agapeworldincvictims.blogspot.com.