Big Madoff Investor Merkin Agrees To Turn Over Hedge Funds

Hedge fund manager J. Ezra Merkin, who was accused by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of funneling $2.4 billion into Bernard Madoff's Ponzi investment scheme, has agreed to turn over three of his hedge funds into receivership. Merkin, who allegedly made $470 million from the Madoff investments and was warned about Madoff, made the deal with Cuomo's office; David Markowitz, who heads the AG's office's Investor Protection Bureau, told a judge, "The purpose of this is to make sure that the victims of the fraud here have independent trustees and fiduciaries overlooking what’s left of their assets." In other hedge funds-that- invested-with-Madoff news, three hedge funds managed by the Fairfield Greenwich Group were sued by the trustee liquidating Madoff's estate; the NY Times reports, "The civil lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan, seeks the return of $3.2 billion that the three funds took out of their Madoff accounts from 2002 until the scheme’s collapse in December."