Ruth Madoff sued for $45 million
From CNN. com
Ruth Madoff, wife of imprisoned Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, was sued Wednesday by a court-appointed trustee seeking $45 million in funds to compensate victims.
Madoff’s client list is released, and lots of people are on it
By, Michael Sallah Miami Herald. From BND.com
Hundreds of prominent South Florida names and institutions — from Miami car dealer Norman Braman to St. Thomas Aquinas High School — are on the list of customers who invested money with accused swindler Bernard Madoff.
The list, released for the first time on Wednesday in bankruptcy court in New York, includes 562 clients from Broward and Miami-Dade counties who did business with the disgraced investor’s brokerage.
”It had a tremendous impact on this area,” said Broward securities lawyer Mark Tepper. “To a lot of the people here, it’s been life changing.”
Madoff, 70, the once prominent Nasdaq chairman who recruited clients from his home and private club in Palm Beach, is charged with securities fraud in the nation’s largest Ponzi scheme, estimated at $50 billion.
Of the 11,374 customers, nearly one in five — or 2,070 — are from Florida, the hardest hit state outside New York, according to a Miami Herald analysis of the 162-page list.
One of the local residents on the list: Adele Fox, 85, of Tamarac, a career high school administrator. Not only was her money in the brokerage, but her cousin, Jerome Horowitz, is one of the original accountants for the Madoff funds. He recommended it.
She was an investor for ”a very long time,” but now she’s “wiped out. . . . All my life savings gone. It’s just awful.”
Braman, 76, the car dealer, has two foundations and one personal account on the list.
From the foundations, he said Thursday, ”All obligations that we have made by our foundations have been honored and paid, by myself personally.” He wrote checks to honor those commitments, he said, but declined to say how much he was invested in Madoff’s brokerage.
Beyond Florida, the list reveals a Who’s Who of celebrities in sports, business and entertainment: Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, actor Kevin Bacon and World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein.
The list emerged late Wednesday, shortly after a whistleblower in the case, Harry Markopolos, told House lawmakers at a hearing that he had discovered that additional funds had relayed investments to Madoff in Europe — and that the managers of these ”feeder” funds may have ignored signs of the massive fraud scheme.
He plans to present his findings to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s inspector general Thursday. If proven, they would substantiate the assertions of many analysts that the alleged fraud was far too large for Madoff to have conducted alone.
House lawmakers on Wednesday also sparred with SEC officials, accusing them of impeding their probe into how the agency failed to uncover the alleged fraud.
Prosecutors say Madoff admits he lost more than $50 billion belonging to investors. Defense lawyers say he has cooperated with authorities to help identify assets.
The list of client names, including those of Madoff’s relatives, numerous celebrities, dead people and charitable institutions, are listed on the 162-page document. Each page carries 84 single-spaced lines. Some customers are listed multiple times, presumably because they had multiple accounts.
The customers include prominent people and institutions that already had been publicly revealed, such as the Wilpon family, owner of the New York Mets.
Also listed were more than two dozen accounts involving the Mets and companies affiliated with their owners, many with addresses at Shea Stadium.
The amount each person or institution invested with Madoff isn’t listed.
One client is Ira Sorkin, the attorney who’s defending Madoff against charges he perpetrated the biggest financial fraud in history. Others include Madoff’s wife, sons, brother and other relatives.
The list was compiled by AlixPartners LLP, a Dallas company hired as claims agent by the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.
Claims Total Over 15,400 in Fraud by Madoff
The New York Times (7/9/09) is reporting…
The final tally of claims from victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme comes to more than 15,400, substantially higher than the 8,800 claims that had been filed by the first of June.
The total was included in an interim report filed on Thursday in Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan by Irving H. Picard, the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Mr. Madoff’s estate.
Click link above for complete article.
Already Burned, Madoff Victims Now Face “Clawbacks”
by Peter Gorenstein, finance.yahoo.com
Last week U.S. District Judge Denny Chin guaranteed scammer Bernard Madoff would spend the rest of his life in prison – sentencing him to 150 years behind bars. But as Tech Ticker learned first hand at last week’s sentencing hearing, the financial woes are just beginning for many of his victims’.
Court-appointed trustee Irving Picard has recovered about $1.2 billion of $13.2 billion in estimated net losses so far, The Wall Street Journal reports. He is now looking to victims who pulled out their money in previous years for the rest. To this end, he has filed so-called “clawback” suits.
Picard wants “to get all of these assets back so he can now give them to all of Madoff victims rather than have them only benefit a few,” says Ken Rubinstein, senior partner at Rubinstein & Rubinstein, and a specialist in areas of estate and tax planning.
What’s a victim in this situation to do? Rubinstein, who represents a number of Madoff clients, is telling them to engage in pre-bankruptcy planning. “You’re allowed under the law to convert non-exempt assets… into exempt assets.” In plain English, that means put your money where the government (or Irving Picard) can’t touch it. Such exempt assets include life insurance policies, retirement accounts and annuities.
On the bright side, there is a chance some of these same victims can get back money from the IRS. In what may be a rare moment of positive PR for the tax authority, they are allowing victims to get refunds on phantom profits by filing an amended return. Rubinstein says, “The IRS is cooperating and helpful in this regard.” A phrase not often uttered in America.
Madoff Claims for $231 Million Approved for Payment
By Erik Larson, Bloomberg.com
Securities Investor Protection Corp., the government-chartered agency liquidating Bernard Madoff’s defunct business, said $231 million has been committed from its reserves to pay 543 claims by the con man’s victims.
The agency, known as SIPC, said today the same claimants were approved to receive as much as $2.74 billion in future payments, depending on how much money is recovered in the wake of Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. The 543 are the first of thousands of claims to be evaluated, according to SIPC. Tomorrow is the deadline for filing claims.
The actions announced today represent “major progress” in the effort to pay victims for their losses, SIPC President Stephen Harbeck said in a statement. The victims can get as much as $500,000 each from SIPC and more if the trustee, Irving Picard, recovers enough assets.
Madoff, 71, pleaded guilty in March and was sentenced two days ago to 150 years in prison for using money from new customers to pay off earlier investors. Trades reported on years of customer statements were never executed, according to Picard.
In addition to lawsuits, Picard has asked hundreds of victims to voluntarily return their “fictitious” profits from Madoff’s firm, New York-based Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Loss Calculation
Picard, a lawyer at Baker & Hostetler LLP in New York, has been sued by some victims for calculating each investor’s loss by subtracting withdrawals from deposits.
Hundreds of victims argue that, under federal law, claims must be based on their final account statements including bogus returns.
Picard sued Madoff investors including financier Ezra Merkin and philanthropists Stanley Chais and Jeffry Picower. He claims the men knew or should have known of the fraud, and that they profited from years’ worth of fake profits.
Harbeck said in May that the liquidation could take more than 10 years. Picard’s spokesman, Kevin McCue, didn’t immediately return a call today for comment.
Last-minute filers can deliver their claims by hand to AlixPartners LLP in care of Baker & Hostetler LLP, 45 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10111, until midnight tomorrow, SIPC said in its statement.
The case is In re. Bernard L. Madoff, 09-11893, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).