- Madoff Tried to Stave Off Firm's Crash Before Arrest
- The SEC Watchdog Who Missed Madoff - Don't Blame Me: Cheung
- Will Madoff's enablers get hard time?
- Madoff victims may get some cash within a month
- French Losses in Madoff Fraud Investigated by Paris Prosecutors
- Bernard Madoff victims shouldn’t hope for refunds
- Credit Suisse Said to Have Urged Clients to Dump Madoff Funds
- Austria’s ‘Woman on Wall St.’ and Madoff
- Family Jewels
- Cheat, Pray, Love
- NYU 'Berned' For $94 Million
- Millennium appoints independent administrator
- No Love For Isle-Hogging Noels
- Grandiosity: Fraud's Perfect Cloak
- Milberg rides Madoff
Madoff Tried to Stave Off Firm's Crash Before Arrest - Wall Street Journal
Ten days before his arrest, Bernard Madoff received $250 million from a man who helped give him his start on Wall Street, a move that shows how the investment manager tried to raise cash to stave off his firm's collapse.
Mr. Madoff received $250 million around Dec. 1 from Carl Shapiro, a 95-year-old Palm Beach, Fla., philanthropist and entrepreneur who is one of Mr. Madoff's oldest friends and biggest financial backers, according to people familiar with the matter.
It isn't clear whether the sum was a loan or an investment, though people familiar with the matter say Mr. Madoff told Mr. Shapiro that he would be paid back quickly with interest or a gain. But none of the money was repaid, according to the people. Mr. Shapiro has personally lost an estimated $400 million from the Madoff fraud, including the $250 million. His charitable foundation has lost an estimated $100 million or more. Mr. Shapiro declined to comment.....
The SEC Watchdog Who Missed Madoff - Don't Blame Me: Cheung - NY Post
The Securities and Exchange Commission's New York watchdog, under fire for failing to uncover Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme - despite a dead-on tip by a whistleblower - yesterday tearfully defended herself, arguing that she and the agency did the best job possible.
"Why are you taking a mid-level staff person and making me responsible for the failure of the American economy?" an upset Meaghan Cheung, with eyes tearing up, told The Post.
"I worked very hard for 10 years to make a career, and a reputation, and that has been destroyed in a month," said Cheung, who was the SEC's branch chief of the New York enforcement division during that unit's earlier probe of Madoff's brokerage business....
Will Madoff's enablers get hard time? - Fortune
Nice work if you can get it: Hanging out at the Palm Beach Country Club and introducing friends to an exclusive and seemingly safe place to stash your cash - Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.
That was life for Robert Jaffe, a South Florida philanthropist and son-in-law of one of Madoff's earliest investors, Carl Shapiro, founder of the clothing brand Kay Windsor. Nearly 20 years ago Shapiro set up Jaffe with a job introducing people to Madoff. As Jaffe told the Palm Beach Daily News, he would earn a small percentage of an investor's first profits. "A common practice in the business," as he described it.
But now that Bernie Madoff has been accused of masterminding a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Jaffe's sweet life has turned sour. And defrauded Madoff investors are wondering what happens to conduits like Jaffe. Though prosecutors haven't commented on the go-betweens, "the feds will work hard to press charges against them," says a New York attorney representing a Madoff investor. "There's no Ponzi scheme without its marketers."....
Madoff victims may get some cash within a month - Reuters
Investors who lost money in Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion (34 billion pound) fraud might begin recovering some of their funds as soon as next month, Securities Investor Protection Corp, President Stephen Harbeck told Bloomberg in an interview.
The first payouts from the investor protection fund could occur in "a month or two" if the cash isn't difficult to trace, Harbeck told the agency.
Other customers will have to wait for months, he told the agency, declining to be more specific.....
French Losses in Madoff Fraud Investigated by Paris Prosecutors - Bloomberg
Paris prosecutors have opened a preliminary inquiry into whether French investors who lost money in Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion fraud were victims of a crime, a spokeswoman for the investigators said today.
The prosecutors are “conducting an in-house analysis, compiling data” to decide whether to name an investigating judge to conduct a full-scale probe, Isabelle Montagne, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutors’ office, said in a telephone interview.....
Bernard Madoff victims shouldn’t hope for refunds - Daily Telegraph
Bernie Madoff's effort to sneak $1m-plus of jewellery to family members suggests he has a few assets.
But those insignificant trinkets won't help investors hit by his alleged $50bn fraud. Even long-term, they shouldn't expect to recoup much - a few pennies on the dollar at most.
Investor exposures are reportedly mounting towards the huge figure Madoff is supposed to have confessed to his sons. The problem is, most of the money probably never existed.....
Credit Suisse Said to Have Urged Clients to Dump Madoff Funds - Bloomberg
Credit Suisse Group AG, whose clients lost almost $1 billion in Bernard Madoff’s alleged swindle, urged customers more than eight years ago to withdraw cash from his firm because the bank couldn’t determine how he made money, said three people familiar with the matter.
Oswald Gruebel, who headed the private-banking unit of Switzerland’s No. 2 lender at the time, made the recommendation after meeting Madoff in New York in June 2000, the people said, speaking anonymously because the details were private. Credit Suisse customers proceeded to redeem about $250 million from Madoff-run funds, half the total held by the bank’s clients, the people said.
Credit Suisse, based in Zurich, risked alienating clients who were reaping annual returns from Madoff of about 11 percent a year, said two of the people at the meeting, which included executives from Fairfield Greenwich Group, a so-called feeder fund for Madoff. The bank couldn’t force clients to pull out their money.....
Austria’s ‘Woman on Wall St.’ and Madoff - NY Times
With an aggressive style that stood out in the staid world of Austrian banking even more than her bouffant red wig, Sonja Kohn made few friends gathering billions for Bernard L. Madoff from wealthy investors in Russia and across Europe.
Now, she has even fewer. Mrs. Kohn has dropped out of sight, leaving the firm she founded, Bank Medici, in the hands of Austrian regulators, who took it over last week.....
Family Jewels - New Yorker
Last week, with family vacations to St. Bart’s and Aspen cancelled, the Upper East Side was swarming with kids. The McDonald’s at Eighty-fifth and Third was packed—and, to most of the younger patrons, if not the sunken-eyed parents, an afternoon there was probably just as good as skiing. (The Web site destroydebt.com had posted a list of “20 Inexpensive Ways to Entertain Your Kids in the Winter.” No. 15: “Count and roll the change.”)
At The Breakers, in Palm Beach, the ten-thousand-dollar-a-week cabanas were all booked, but a guest there said the atmosphere was grim. “It’s like everybody’s in mourning,” he said, referring both to Bernie Madoff’s victims and to the people whose stock portfolios had merely taken a dive. “It’s like a member of the family has died, and its name is Money.” A new poolside pastime had emerged, in place of canasta: calling a friend over and showing him a stack of account statements from Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities—the now worthless things touting those steady ten- to fifteen-per-cent returns—and asking, “What did I miss?” The guest, having seen a few, thought he’d detected a clue (besides the impossible math): “When you get a statement from J. P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch, it’s done on a laser printer. Madoff’s statements were all done on nineteen-nineties printers—impact printers, typewriter-ribbon printers. If I was running a con, I would have kept my technology up to date is what I’m saying.”.....
Cheat, Pray, Love - New Yorker
Along with slashed payrolls, rising foreclosures, and plummeting stock prices, 2008 brought another unwelcome development: a surge in bank robberies, which were up more than fifty per cent in New York. This wasn’t shocking: we typically expect property crimes to rise in hard economic times. There is, though, one crime against property which bucks this trend: defrauding investors. On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough. While bank robbers are getting busier, the Bernard Madoffs are starting to get caught.
NYU 'Berned' For $94 Million - NY Post
New York University lost as much as $94 million when a hotshot money manager, against the school's wishes, invested the cash with swindler Bernie Madoff, its lawyers told a judge yesterday.
Ariel Fund Ltd., run by financier and GMAC Chairman Ezra Merkin, "engaged in purposeful deceit" by putting the funds with Madoff, NYU lawyer Beth Kaswan complained.....
Millennium appoints independent administrator - Financial Times
Millennium Management, the $11bn New York hedge fund run by Izzy Englander, has appointed an independent administrator to provide worried investors with reassurance in the wake of alleged $50bn Bernard Madoff fraud.
Millennium appointed London-listed GlobeOp to provide independent valuations and checks on its assets, something common among newer funds but rare for the largest, oldest US hedge funds.Investors have become increasingly nervous in the wake of the arrest of Mr Madoff, a broker who managed money on behalf of some of the biggest hedge fund investors, and many say third party administration provides an extra layer of protection against fraud.....
No Love For Isle-Hogging Noels - NY Post Page Six
THE Noel family, which lost half its fortune in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, was relieved when it was able to rent out the clan's Mustique mansion over the holidays - but they weren't the only ones who were happy. One local resident told Page Six that "the No. 1 comment this winter was how much nicer it is on the island without the Noels."
Even the local watering holes picked up on neighbors' joy at the brood's absence, with one well-known bar featuring a "No Noel" cocktail, which our source described as "a take on a mojito."...But Walter, his wife, Monica, their five daughters - Corina, Lisina, Alix, Marisa and Ariane - and all their husbands and children "are definitely not missed," said our peeved insider. "They didn't have many real friends here."
"If you were playing tennis, they would all come onto the side of the courts and talk so loudly you had to stop your game because you couldn't concentrate," said our tipster. The Noels built their own court this year, and according to the source, "we were all so relieved they would not come to the main island courts anymore."
Grandiosity: Fraud's Perfect Cloak - Allan Sloan, Washington Post
Yes, there really are times when life imitates art. A case in point: the Bernie Madoff scandal, in which the disgraced investor bears a startling resemblance to Zero Mostel's sleazy theater promoter in one of my favorite flicks, "The Producers."
What do the real-life Madoff's alleged actions and the scheme of Mostel's fictional Max Bialystock have in common? They used the same principles to pull off a big-time financial fraud. These are: If you're going to steal, steal big. If you're going to cook the books, make up numbers of your own -- don't try to doctor the real ones. And, finally, if you're going to fleece people, turn down enough potential investors so that those whose money you take feel so honored that they don't do basic homework to find out about you.....
Milberg rides Madoff - Crain's NY
Bernard Madoff is said to have ruined many a fortune, but for one law firm, history's largest alleged Ponzi scheme is opening the door for a comeback.
The law firm formerly known as Milberg Weiss—considered the go-to firm for shareholder class-action suits until a 2006 kickback scandal landed several of its name partners in prison—is once again in demand.
The firm, now called simply Milberg LLP, has signed up more than 100 Madoff victims, the biggest group assembled by any one firm to date. All told, these clients face estimated losses of $1.5 billion to $2 billion. In addition to representing a potential windfall in fees, the cases could help restore the firm's reputation.....
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