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Category: Madoff
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Is the noose tightening around Peter Madoff?
Peter B. Madoff, the younger brother and business partner of convicted felon Bernard Madoff, is under increasing scrutiny from investigators, as well as victims of the $65 billion investor fraud.
The latest indication of the younger Madoff’s possible exposure comes from the report of one investor, who said that he withdrew a small sum entrusted to Bernard Madoff in July 1985, and received a $10,000 check drawn on the older Madoff’s bank account – but signed by Peter Madoff.
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MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.The investor provided a copy of the check to the New York Times, but asked not to be identified to guard his family’s privacy. The investor said that others in his family had also received checks with Peter Madoff’s signature in the mid-1980s, although later checks were signed only by Bernard Madoff.
The timing could prove crucial. In his guilty plea, Bernard Madoff stated that he had begun the fraud in the early 1990s “to the best of my recollection.” Authorities, however, date the scheme to the early 1980s, although they have not publicly revealed any evidence.
John R. Wing, a lawyer for Peter Madoff, 63, has said his client, who was the firm’s senior managing partner and chief compliance officer, had no knowledge of the fraud and has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
But yesterday, a New York State Supreme Court Justice Stephen A. Bucaria, sitting in Nassau County, imposed a temporary asset freeze on Peter Madoff’s accounts at the request of a law student from Dix Hills, NY. The law student, Andrew Ross Samuels, had been the beneficiary of a college trust fund, which was entirely lost to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
The freeze prohibits Peter Madoff from moving money from any bank, brokerage firm or other financial institution or from selling or borrowing against his physical assets. It also requires him to disclose the location of any assets he has “secreted” so far, and directs any financial institution to take “reasonable precautions” to ensure that he complies with the order.
Steven R. Schlesinger, a lawyer for Samuels, said that his client was the beneficiary of a $478,000 fund set up in 1997 by Samuel’s grandfather, Martin J. Joel Jr. and Peter Madoff as the trustees.
When Joel died in 2003, Peter Madoff became the sole trustee, and the entire fund was invested with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, according to Schlesinger.
Besides investing the trust fund in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, Peter Madoff also did not notify Samuels that he could have terminated the trust in 2007, when he turned 21, the complaint says.
The lawsuit is at least the second brought against Peter Madoff since his brother’s arrest.
Last month, two children of N.J. Senator Frank Lautenberg filed an action against the younger Madoff, saying that as the firm’s senior managing partner and chief compliance officer, he either failed to spot “obvious, material red flags” of fraud, or covered them up.
The Lautenbergs, who had invested a family philanthropy as well as individual savings with Madoff’s firm, say they lost $7 million as a result of the scheme.
Peter Madoff joined his brother’s firm in 1970 after completing law school, and together they helped pioneer the computer-driven trading methods that culminated in the development of the electronic trading network known as the Nasdaq market.
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This post is tagged with: Andrew Ross Samuels, Bernard Madoff, Bernard Madoff Investment Securities, Frank Lautenberg, Madoff, Peter Madoff, Recent Stories, Stephen SchlesingerRead related stories: Madoff · Recent Stories
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Ruth Madoff got $2M from husband’s UK officeMarch 27, 2009 at 2:05pm
British investigators said Friday that Ruth Madoff got a $2 million payment from the London division of her husband’s securities firm just weeks before he was arrested for securities fraud.
Muck Tracker Ruth Madoff Pursued Into Food Emporium by Photographers
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Feds to Go After Madoff Homes Cars and Boats
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Feds to go after Ruth Madoff’s money too
Ruth Madoff will not get any breaks: Federal authorities plan to go after more than $100 million in real estate, cash, art, autos, boats and other property owned by her and her husband Bernard Madoff, who pleaded guilty last week to running the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
The government said in a court filing Sunday that it intends to seize all the assets, including the Madoffs’ Upper East Side penthouse, which is in Ruth Madoff’s name, as well as their homes in Montauk, New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and France, whose combined worth has been put at $22 million.
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Madoff, 70, pleaded guilty March 12 to defrauding investors of as much as $65 billion and faces 150 years in prison. His attorneys filed a request with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York that he be freed until his sentencing June 16.
The government’s “notice of intent to seek forfeiture” is not a seizure, but rather, alerts U.S. District Judge Denny Chin and the Madoffs that prosecutors intend to go after the possessions.
Lawyers for the Madoffs have previously argued that Ruth Madoff is the rightful owner of $69 million worth of cash and bonds, in addition to the Manhattan apartment, which they say are “unrelated” to her husband’s fraud.
To date, she has not been accused of any wrongdoing. However, her withdrawal of $15 million from a brokerage account a short time before her husband was arrested has increased the suspicion that she knew something of her husband’s crimes.
According to court documents filed Friday, the Madoffs had nearly a billion dollars in personal wealth at the end of last year which is now being eyed by defrauded investors trying to recoup the money they lost in Madoff’s scam.
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This post is tagged with: Bernard L. Madoff, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, Madoff, Recent Stories, Ruth MadoffRead related stories: Madoff · Recent Stories1 Comments
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The Judicial system is missing the boat on this one. There is a deal that should be made with Madoff.
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2009/03/deal-to-make-with-madoff.html
The objective is NOT revenge, but Restitution and Reconstruction.
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Henry Kravis is at the door, knocking politelyMarch 18, 2009 at 9:17am
Buyout king Henry Kravis has been humbled, if only slightly.
Charges against Madoff leave many unanswered questions
Barring a change of heart, Bernard L. Madoff will plead guilty tomorrow to running a massive Ponzi scheme for at least a quarter century that defrauded thousands of people in virtually every corner of the globe.
Based on 11 charges unveiled for the first time last night, the disgraced financier would face a maximum sentence of 150 years in jail, and required restitution and fines of as much as $170 billion. That is the amount prosecutors believe moved through his accounts during the years he conducted the fraud, although there is no indication that Madoff has anywhere close to that sum.
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Lev L. Dassin, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, said Tuesday that his staff was still unraveling the fraud to determine who besides Madoff might have helped.
“The filing of these charges does not end the matter,” Dassin said in a statement.
Dassin said he has made no agreement to seek leniency in return for Madoff’s guilty plea or his cooperation in the investigation.
The prosecutor’s release of charges offered some fresh information about how they believe Madoff conducted his scam. For starters, they up the total pricetag from his $50-billion estimate to nearly $65 billion – the amount that thousands of customers believed they had in their accounts at the time of his arrest.
And they date the fraud to as far back as the early 1980s, when they allege that Madoff assembled an ill-trained and inexperienced clerical staff, directed them to “generate false and fraudulent documents,” told lies and supplied phony records to regulators and shuffled hundreds of millions of dollars from bank to bank to create the illusion of active trading, according to the criminal information.
For the first time, they disclose that some investors were treated differently – a select group were offered returns as high as 45 percent, according to the criminal information
And they raise questions about the supposed separation between Madoff’s 17th-floor investment operation and the supposedly legitimate wholesale stock trading operation that his sons ran. Prosecutors charge that from at least 2002 through 2008, more than $250 million from investors in the Ponzi scheme was transferred into the operations of those other businesses.
They also allege that Madoff transferred money from his firm’s London office “to purchase property and services for the personal use and benefit” of himself, his family members and associates.
Madoff has been free on $10 million bail, but confined to his apartment, since his arrest in December. It is not clear whether the government will seek to have his bail revoked if he pleads guilty on Thursday.
The charges against him include securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and theft from an employee benefit plan.
Even if Madoff pleads guilty as expected, the judge said he will not be sentenced for several months.
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Harvard Law ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.March 12, 2009 at 11:55am
To save on travel expenses, the Harvard Law School Class of 1991 might as well have its reunion this year at the White House.
Madoffs Plea Leaves Many Unanswered Questions
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Madoff aide said to have ordered up fake trading tickets
Fresh details about the alleged billion-dollar Ponzi scheme run by Bernard L. Madoff are emerging as the accused swindler prepares for a possible guilty plea in federal court Thursday.
Annette Bongiorno, a longtime aide to Madoff, allegedly instructed two assistants to create trading tickets, now believed to be bogus, using research of daily share prices for blue-chip stocks, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
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The information comes from two assistants who were interviewed by federal authorities last month through so-called proffer agreements, in which prosecutors agree not to use their statements against them as long as they tell the truth, according to the Journal.
Such fact-gathering doesn’t mean that prosecutors will determine there was any criminal liability. To date, no one save for Madoff has been charged with a crime. The Journal report notes that large-scale fraud investigations often begin with lower-level employees to find out what they knew about the work of their supervisor or other managers, then continue to climb up the ladder
Bongiorno, 60, was once Madoff’s personal secretary and later oversaw some of the firm’s oldest accounts.
The role of another Madoff employee, chief financial officer Frank DiPascali, is also being examined as part of the ongoing probe, the Journal reports.
Bongiorno and DiPascali were longtime neighbors in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens, and she is said to have introduced him to Madoff, according to a Bloomberg News report.
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Harvard Law ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.March 12, 2009 at 11:55am
To save on travel expenses, the Harvard Law School Class of 1991 might as well have its reunion this year at the White House.
Madoff Aide Said to Have Created Bogus Trading Tickets
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1 Comments
#1. Silk32 03.26.2009
The common thread amongst Madoff, Standford and Charles Ponzi is (i) they all offered returns to investors that was higher than the competition’s and was seemingly too good to be true, (ii) they had outsized reputations for business acument and (iii) they “looked the part”. Corporate swindlers succeed within Corporate America because they have what is known as “executive presence” and they prey on corporations’ penchant for looking only at the surface of things. If a group of innercity kids can figure this out then I know adults can. To learn more go to http://www.newyorkshockexchange.com/content/view/85/37/
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