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  • Ruth Madoff seeks to keep NY penthouse, $62M in assets

    The wife of accused swindler Bernard Madoff is arguing that their $7 million Manhattan penthouse and an additional $62 million in assets belong to her.

    In court papers filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Ruth Madoff and her lawyer claim that the Upper East Side apartment, $45 million in municipal bonds and $17 million more in a separate account, all belong to her, rather than to her husband, who was charged with a $50 billion scheme to defraud investors.

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    The bonds, in a Cohmad Securities account held by Ruth Madoff, and about $17 million held by her in a Wachovia Bank account, “are unrelated to the fraud, according to the papers.

    The papers were filed in connection with a U.S. District Court judge’s order Monday to partially lift a freeze on Madoff’s assets so that he could cooperate with a court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of his firm to recover money for bilked investors.

    To date, the trustee has said the Manhattan penthouse apartment and other properties in Montauk, N.Y. and Palm Beach, FL, which were used to secure Bernard Madoff’s bail, were off limits. But if there’s a conviction, those assets might be seized to help pay victims’ claims.

    “We are looking at every member of the Madoff family,” David Sheen, an attorney representing the trustee said regarding the personal property.

    Cohmad Securities, where Ruth Madoff says her account holds municipal bonds, had an office in Madoff’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan. The firm was part-owned by Bernard Madoff and has been alleged by the Massachusetts Securities Division to be a “feeder fund” to his investment firm.

    Last month, Massachusetts regulators said Ruth Madoff withdrew $15.5 million from Cohmad Securities in November and December, including $10 million on the eve of her husband’s arrest for securities fraud.

    She has not been charged with any wrongdoing, however, and is represented by the same attorney as her husband.

    Bernard Madoff was arrested Dec. 11 and charged with securities fraud after authorities said that he confessed to his sons that he had carried out a Ponzi scheme for years, using new money from investors to pay off early investors, while issuing bogus statements claiming investment gains. He has been under house arrest in their Manhattan apartment.

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    • #1.   Alison 03.03.2009

      She does not deserve ANY of the money or properties unless she can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that it belongs to her and did not come from her husband or one of his numerous companies, which she probably can’t. of course she is one of the rich so normal rules do not apply.
      If I had stolen lets say about $100,000.00 from my bosses and clients, would I be allowed to stay home? no my butt would be in jail so fast..
      on the TV today, it was mentioned that Barack Obama is trying to get rid of prosperity… let me tell you prosperity is not 2% of the population making more money than they can EVER spend and the rest of us watching them complain about their lot in life. I am hopeful that his efforts will be successful but even if he fails, at least he tried to do something!! remember the last guy?!? seemed to spend most of his time with his head up his butt, telling everyone that thing were going well….

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    • FCC pick Genachowski is longtime Obama friend, adviser

      March 4, 2009 at 6:04pm

      He is a law school friend of Obama’s and a successful, high-tech entrepreneur who looks to expand broadband service to rural and underserved areas, and to promote an open Internet and diverse media ownership.

    • Stanford’s ties to Madoff helped sink him

      Consider it a joke from the universe: It was Bernard Madoff’s financial meltdown that helped implicate R. Allen Stanford, the flamboyant Texas billionaire accused of defrauding investors of $8 billion.

      Of course, the men share certain similarities one might expect from shrewd con men: Both cultivated wealthy investors. And both claimed “premium” returns that regulators say never existed.

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      But here the plot thickens: Employees of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission told the Associated Press that after the embarrassing revelations about how they had let Madoff through their sights despite multiple tips, they feared getting another black eye with Stanford.

      And so the pace of their investigation into Stanford’s finances dramatically quickened.

      Investigators felt they had the goods on him shortly after Madoff’s arrest, when Stanford put out a memo to investors that a team of 20-plus financial analysts for Stanford Financial Group had vetted all potential investments and that his bank had no “direct or indirect” exposure to Madoff’s scheme.

      Those reassurances were false on both counts, the SEC noted.

      “Contrary to this statement, at least $400,000 … was invested in Meridian, a New York-based hedge fund that used Tremont Partners as its asset manager. Tremont invested approximately 6-8% of the SIB assets they indirectly managed with Madoffs investment firm,” according to the complaint.

      Moreover, the complaint says, the so-called “vetting team” was, in fact, just three people – Stanford, his former college roommate-turned-chief financial officer James M. Davis and his chief investment officer, Laura Pendergest-Holt – all of whom are charged civilly by the SEC.

      But that’s just the beginning of the odd coincidences surrounding Stanford’s business dealings.

      In a post this week, TPMMuckraker called the Stanford saga “a kind of harmonic convergence of recent high-profile muck,” and we have to agree.

      Besides the connection to Madoff, Stanford has a series of ties, most of them indirect, to former Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and even to associates of jailed Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

      For starters, John R. Wyma was a paid lobbyist for Stanford in 2002, helping him oppose proposed regulation of financial services companies.

      Wyma, an influential lobbyist and fund-raiser, was once a confidante and close friend to Blagojevich – that is, before last October, when he agreed to cooperate with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the former governor in hopes of gaining immunity from prosecution himself.

      At the time of Blagojevich’s arrest, The Chicago Tribune reported that Wyma had been one of Blagojevich’s most trusted allies: “The governor routinely reported exchanging personal gifts and often appeared at Wyma-sponsored fundraisers where Wyma’s clients hobnobbed with the governor before turning over checks for his campaign fund.”

      The link to Abramoff is more circuitous: Some of the congressmen who were close to Abramoff appear on the list of those who took trips to Antigua and Barbuda funded in part by Stanford through the Inter-American Economic Council, a business-funded group with the aim of promoting “dialogue about current and future economic strategies in the Hemisphere.”

      Stanford was described in several media reports as a principal backer of the Washington-based group, who used the trips as opportunities to personally talk to lawmakers about “the need to streamline regulatory regimes that make it difficult for investors to take advantage of all of the opportunities that exist in the region.”

      Among the lawmakers who took those junkets were Bob Ney, the former Ohio Republican who went to jail after admitting trading favors for gifts from Abramoff and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), who received generous contributions from several Indian tribes represented by Abramoff.

      In 2006, Stanford received the organization’s “Excellence in Leadership” Award, according to TPMMuckraker. A press release put out by the group declared that Stanford “has strongly supported the work that the IAEC is doing in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

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      • Biden’s son, brother had business ties to Stanford empire

        February 25, 2009 at 8:55am

        Just when you thought R. Hunter Biden’s retirement as a lobbyist had removed the possibility that his business dealings might embarrass his father, Vice President Joseph Biden, comes a report that he and his uncle had business ties with Texas financier R. Allen Stanford.

      • Can Arthur G. Sulzberger III go from cub reporter to savior?

        Following in his father’s footsteps, Arthur G. Sulzberger III reports to work Monday as a Metro desk reporter at The New York Times.

        The 28-year-old son of publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. will start off as a contributor to the City Room, a local blog.

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        Beyond his duties as a junior reporter and writer, the fifth-generation Sultzberger is clearly being groomed to inherit the reins of the struggling newspaper company, which in addition to its flagship publication, publishes The Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune.

        Like his father before him, the younger Sulzberger begins at the Times after developing his reporting chops at The Oregonian and The Providence Journal. (His father began at The Raleigh Times and then reported for the Associated Press before taking a job in The Times’ Washington bureau and eventually moving over to the business side in preparation for his promotion to publisher in 1992 and then, company chairman in 1997).

        Those who have worked with Arthur Gregg Sulzberger – his middle name is the maiden name of his mother, Gail Gregg, who separated from Arthur Jr. last year – give him high marks.

        “He’s incredibly down-to-earth, modest and eager to learn the right way,” one Times newsroom source told the New York Observer. “If you look at his journalism, it’s journalism that people here would produce.

        “When I looked at his clips, I said ‘Oooh! This guy ain’t bad!’” the source added. “I was actually very pleasantly surprised.”

        While the younger Sulzberger was at The Oregonian, he wrote under the byline, Arthur Sulzberger, breaking a series of stories that led to the resignation of the sheriff of Oregon’s largest county.

        “Sheriff Bernie Giusto was the longtime and greatly admired sheriff here, and there was a two-year investigation that was relentless, and Arthur’s work helped push Giusto from office,” said Sandy Rowe, editor of The Oregonian.

        But at the start of the 21st century, being a dogged reporter and a decent guy may not cut it for the heir apparent to run a beleaguered multimedia company which faces competition not just from other media companies, but from Internet giants like Google.

        As business blogger Henry Blodget noted yesterday, New York Times stock now costs less than the Sunday paper, and it’s getting cheaper all the time amid a stampede of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

        And even with a $250 million cash infusion from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the Times’ debt is estimated at $1.1 billion and some investors are restless. On Thursday, the paper suspended dividend payments to shareholdersfor the first time in four decades as a publicly traded company.

        Still, the Times’s family-controlled stock structure seems likely to protect the company from most challenges from outside investors. And few doubt that “Pinch” Sulzberger, as the Times’ chairman is nicknamed, would like to see his son take over.

        In the 1992 book The Girls in the Balcony, which documented a sex-discrimination suit against the Times, author Nan Robertson quotes Sulzberger telling a female executive, “I want to leave my son a different newspaper from the one I’m inheriting.”(It wasn’t until later that the executive thought to point out that Sulzberger has a daughter as well.)

        Annie Sulzberger shows little interest in the Times, however, pursuing a career in art preservation while “aspiring to be a Daily Show correspondent,” according to New York magazine’s description of her Friendster page (which also features a photo of her and her brother smoking a hookah while watching a Woody Allen film).

        So Arthur Gregg Sulzberger III steps up to the plate, where he can expect to be scrutinized like virtually no other reporter.
        That may be good preparation as he auditions for the daunting role of newspaper savior.

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        • Citigroup’s Pandit plays game of musical chairs with feds

          February 25, 2009 at 1:46pm

          Vikram Pandit is still working out a rescue plan that would turn over as much as 40% of his bank to the U.S. government. The question is whether he will manage to hold onto his job – and whether he will want to.

        • Lawsuit against Skull and Bones renews mystery about Geronimo’s remains

          The descendants of Geronimo, the Apache chieftain whose skull is rumored to be part of the initiation rite of Yale’s Skull and Bones Society, filed a lawsuit Tuesday demanding the return of his remains.

          The lawsuit, which named Yale’s oldest and most powerful secret society, the university and the U.S. government, was brought by 20 members of the legendary warrior’s family on the 100th anniversary of his death.

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          Three members of Skull and Bones, including George W Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, are said to have dug up the remains when they were stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma during World War I, and taken them back to the society’s headquarters at Yale, called the Tomb.

          The society, whose membership includes three U.S. presidents, including two Bushes, supposedly makes new members kiss the Chiricahua Apache’s skull as part of their induction.

          “It’s been 100 years since the death of my great-grandfather in 1909. It’s been 100 years of imprisonment,” Harlyn Geronimo said outside of court in Washington D.C.

          “The spirit is wandering until a proper burial has been performed. The only way to put this into closure is to release the remains, his spirit, so that he can be taken back to his homeland in the Gila Mountains, at the head of the Gila River.”

          The suit contends that Geronimo’s descendants are entitled to his remains and funerary possessions under the 1990 American Indian Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

          The Geronimo family is being represented by Ramsey Clark, who was attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson. “In this lawsuit, we’re going to find out if the bones are there or not,” Clark said.

          The latest support for the claim that Geronimo’s remains had been swiped by members of the powerful clandestine society was uncovered two years ago by a researcher at Yale. It’s a June 1918 letter from one Bonesman, Winter Mead, to another, F. Trubee Davison:

          “The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club . . . is now safe inside [the clubhouse] together with his well worn femurs, bit & saddle horn.”

          Another account alleges that Prescott Bush was one of the grave robbers. But at least until now, no member of the society has ever come forward to answer questions.

          We’ve written before about how Sen. John McCain tried to broker a meeting in the mid-1980s between George H.W. Bush and one of his Arizona constituents – a former Apache chieftain name Ned Anderson seeking the return of the remains.

          Bush, however, wasn’t interested, and the matter was dropped, according to Alexandra Robbins, author of Secrets of the Tomb. A 2006 appeal for the skull’s return, this time to George W., from Harlyn Geronimo, also went unanswered, according to a report by the Associated Press.

          For all the intrigue, some believe the whole thing is a story concocted by drunken frat boys.

          “It’s all a bunch of poppycock,” said Towana Spivey, a Geronimo expert, a Chickasaw, and director of the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark Museum told the Washington Post. “He’s still buried where he was originally.”

          Spivey says he is so certain because the Apaches deliberately misled outsiders as to the location of the grave, and a description of the tomb the Bonesmen allegedly found doesn’t match Geronimo’s.

          Of course, Skull and Bones could clear up the controversy, if it wanted, by sending out its skull for forensic testing, said Garrick Bailey, professor of anthropology at the University of Tulsa and former member of the board that oversees the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

          “You should be able to tell whether or not it’s that of an elderly Native American male,” Bailey told the Hartford Courant. “Geronimo was one of the great iconic figures of American Indian history, particularly as it relates to the spirit of resistance. If I was his descendant, I would be appalled that the question lingers.”

          Yet those questions are what give a secret society its grasp on the imagination. The order, founded in 1832, has always been a favorite topic of conspiracy theorists because of its closely held secrets and its powerful membership.

          In the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, both the Democratic and Republican nominees were members. George W. Bush wrote in his 1999 autobiography: “[In my] senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society; so secret, I can’t say anything more.”

          When asked what it meant that both he and Bush were Bonesmen, former Presidential candidate John Kerry said, “Not much because it’s a secret.”

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          • Citigroup’s Pandit plays game of musical chairs with feds

            February 25, 2009 at 1:46pm

            Vikram Pandit is still working out a rescue plan that would turn over as much as 40% of his bank to the U.S. government. The question is whether he will manage to hold onto his job – and whether he will want to.

          • Master of the Upper East Side Helps the Homeless

            This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

          • Stanford accused in a scam ‘of shocking magnitude’

            Anyone suffering from Madoff fatigue may have a new money manager to deplore.

            The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday accused R. Allen Stanford and three of his companies with “orchestrating a fraudulent, multi-billion dollar investment scheme.”

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            The scheme was connected to an $8 billion program in certificates of deposit, the complaint alleged.

            A Texas judge has frozen Stanford’s assets to protect investors, according to an SEC statement.

            “We are alleging a fraud of shocking magnitude that has spread its tentacles throughout the world,” said Rose Romero of the SEC’s Fort Worth office in the statement.

            The New York Times reported on its website that police officers entered the Stanford Group’s offices in Houston yesterday.

            Stanford, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Antigua and Barbuda and the billionaire chairman of Stanford Financial Group, allegedly used false data to lure investors.

            The three Stanford Financial Group companies named in the complaint are: Stanford International Bank in St. John’s, Antigua, West Indies, Stanford Capital Management and Stanford Group Company of Houston.

            According to the SEC, Stanford International Bank sold $8 billion in certificates of deposit by “promising improbable and unsubstantiated high interest rates.”

            The commission’s complaint alleges that bank falsely claimed its investments lost only 1.3 percent in 2008 at a time when the S&P 500 lost 39 percent.

            The complaint also points up the improbable coincidence that the bank reported identical earnings of 15.71 percent in 1995 and 1996.

            And it alleges that only two people, Allen Stanford and James M. Davis, a director and CFO of Stanford Financial Group, are aware of the details of the bank’s investment portfolio.

            Davis, Stanford’s roommate when they attended Baylor University, is also named in the complaint, as is Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer of the bank and of Stanford Financial Group.

            The complaint states that Stanford and Davis refused to testify in the investigation. Pendergest-Holt did testify.

            According to The Wall Street Journal, word of investigations into Stanford International Bank had already sent investors rushing to Antigua to withdraw their money.

            Allen Stanford had earlier told company employees that there would be a “temporary moratorium on early redemptions of CDs,” the paper reported.

            A native of Texas, Stanford is the chairman and sole shareholder of the Stanford Investment Bank in Antigua.

            According to the SEC, the bank claimed 50,000 clients in 2007. It does not loan money. Rather, it sells CDs through the Stanford Group Company.

            Stanford became a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda 10 years ago. He was knighted there and is referred to as Sir Allen Stanford on his company’s website.

            Stanford Financial Group sponsors a variety of sporting events, most recently a cricket tournament in Antigua with $20 million in prizes, reportedly the most lucrative in the history of the sport.

            The Stanford International Bank had told investors in an earlier report that it had no exposure to funds controlled by Bernard L. Madoff, the investment manager who may have run a $50 million Ponzi scheme.

            The Times reported, however, that the Stanford bank did lose $400,000 in an investment in a Madoff feeder fund.

            According to federal records, Stanford has made extensive campaign contributions over the years.

            Recipients of donations from Stanford, his companies or his employees include Democratic Senators Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Charles Schumer of New York and Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas.

            Contributions have also gone to several members of the House of Representatives, including Charles Rangel of New York, a Democrat, and Republican Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.

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            3 Comments

            • #1.   Pellucid 02.18.2009

              Your headline said he as arrested.

              WHERE, HOW ???

            • #2.   Zyskandar A. Jaimot 02.18.2009

              The ‘SCAMSTER’ STANFORD’s friends in the US CONGRESS…
              The latest ‘SCAMSTER’ on the WORLD FINANCIAL SCENE is
              ALLEN STANFORD bilking people out of $8BILLIONS+[now of parts unknown cuz he has fled the US or made himself unavailable to authorities!] His ‘friends’ included among the top recipients and favorites getting the ‘SCAMSTERS’ illicit monies/favors: Senaturd Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), REPREHENSIBLE Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Texas), Senaturd John McCain (R-Ariz.), Senaturd Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Senaturd John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of the members who took a trip to Antigua where he was entertained by Stanford. GREAT ROSTER OF SCUMMY SYCOPHANTS EH THESE US SENATURDS???

            • #3.   John Lloyd Scharf 02.18.2009

              National Ponzi Scheme – Recovery.Gov – ARRA – Stimulus Plan

              The $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is an extention of the National Debt by $2580 for every man, woman, and child.

              Of that, President Obama claims $288 billion is “Tax Relief,” or $944 per person. Then, he claims the “Tax Relief” includes $15 billion for infrastructure and science, $61 billion for “protecting the vulnerable,” $25 billion for education and training, and $22 billion for “Energy.”

              So, after all those special tax cut programs are removed, that leaves $165 billion of more general “Tax Relief,” for all of us not in those categories, or $540 per person. So, you are going into debt for investing $2580 for $540 in tax relief.

              A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit. Is the ARRA any less of a Ponzi Scheme when the Federal Government does this than when Charles Ponzi or Bernard Madoff does this? Does it matter whether Nicolas Cosmo, Allen Stanford, or Barack Obama does this?

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