Mets Made $48 Million With Madoff, But Wilpon May Have Lost Lots More

While losses are all too familiar to the Mets, it turns out that the organization made a bit from two accounts invested with Bernard Madoff. The NY Times reports, based on court filings, "Mets LP, one of the team’s financial arms, withdrew $570.5 million from two accounts it held with Madoff’s company, $47.8 million more than it put in."

This means that Mets LP could face clawbacks from the trustee going after whatever Madoff assets are around in order to give money back to victims. However, one of those victims is Mets owner Fred Wilpon. He is rumored to have lost a lot: The Post reminds us, "Wilpon, chairman of the Sterling Equities real-estate investment firm, personally lost $700 million investing with Madoff, pal Larry King told GQ magazine earlier this year, although at the time the Mets said: 'The numbers speculated continue to be inaccurate." Who knows how many accounts the Mets, Sterling and Wilpon had with the Mets.

The interesting thing is that the Mets apparently used money meant for players—the players' "deferred salaries"—to invest with Madoff, in hopes of those big, fake Ponzi returns. The Times explains, "The Mets paid the players their salaries and interest of a few percentage points as compensation for not taking all their money upfront, the person said."