Results tagged “jezramerkin”

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."

According to court papers unsealed yesterday, hedge fund manager J. Ezra Merkin was apparently warned that Bernard Madoff's investments were shady back in the 1990s. Merkin, currently accused of funneling $2.4 billion into Madoff's fund, is being sued by NYU—which lost $24 million of its endowment through Merkin's fund. Fox Business, which filed a motion to have the documents unsealed, reports that Merkin employee Victor Teicher, a former financial analyst convicted for insider trading, told Merkin that Madoff's fund didn't "smell right" and "were inconsistent with what could possibly take place in reality." Teicher also said in his deposition that Merkin's accountant said Madoff's work "looked like a fraud." When news of Madoff's fraud this past December surfaced, Teicher sent Merkin an e-mail: "The Madoff news is hilarious; hope you negotiate out of this mess as well as possible; I'm yours to help in any way I can; unfortunately, you've paid a big price for a lesson on the cost of being greedy," and followed up with another, "I guess you did such a good job in fooling a lot of people that you ultimately fooled yourself."

Today, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo unleashed fraud charges against J. Ezra Merkin, a money manager. The press release from Cuomo's office was titled "MADOFF MIDDLEMAN EZRA MERKIN CHARGED WITH FRAUD FOR SECRETLY STEERING $2.4 BILLION IN INVESTOR ASSETS INTO MADOFF’S PONZI SCHEME."

The federal judge deciding whether to revoke Bernard Madoff's bail will announce his decision on Monday, giving the fraudulent investor another weekend under house arrest at his $7 million Upper East Side penthouse.