In a new interview with 60 Minutes airing this Sunday, Ruth Madoff claims that she and disgraced husband Bernie Madoff attempted to commit suicide together, shortly after his massive Ponzi scheme was revealed. In the first interview she has given about the Madoff crimes, Ruth told Morley Safer, "I don't know whose idea it was, but we decided to kill ourselves because it was so horrendous what was happening. We had terrible phone calls. Hate mail, just beyond anything and I said '...I just can't go on anymore.'" more ›

Even Orcrist the Goblin Killer couldn't help knuckleballer R.A. Dickey and the Mets slay the Houston Astros yesterday. But despite the loss, the patchwork team has really improved over the last month, and are now a mere three games below .500. The team is so focused, they didn't even blink when a particularly athletic fan ran onto the Minute Maid Park field in Houston during the game Friday, and evaded capture with some serious skills: more ›

The Post reported this morning that billionaire hedge funder Steven Cohen is the frontrunner to buy the Mets; it seems like the team leaked the info out purposefully to gauge reaction to his status as the "preferred bidder." But seeing as how this is the Mets, you know nothing can go right...because the Wall Street Journal reports that Cohen is also being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible insider trading. The Mets truly are the Rodney Dangerfields of professional sports. more ›

After years of silence, Bernie Madoff has been giving a very few select interviews the last couple months. We've learned that he thinks the banks were complicit with his massive Ponzi scheme, he feels terrible about what he's done to his family, and he's not quite sure if he's a sociopath or not. In a brand new, intense interview with the Financial Times, Madoff retold the whole twisted story of his rise and fall in the money world, and also claimed to possibly have a new job opportunity: developing ethics courses for some of the elite businesses schools in the country. more ›

A lot has changed in a few years for the Mets: in 2009, they were the second most valuable team in the MLB, worth $912 million, and averaged over 3 million fans a year. But according to Forbes, their value has dropped 13 percent from last year. The Mets are now worth $747 million, attendance at Citifield fell by 600,000 last year, and they are approximately $450 million in debt. The Post has even taken to calling them the "New York Debts." Guess this proves once and for all that a $1 billion lawsuit really isn't a good thing. more ›

It feels as though we start every day hoping against hope that maybe we'll read some good news about the Mets; maybe Carlos Beltran will suddenly revert to his 2006 form! Or maybe Oliver Perez will have learned how to throw fastballs again! Or even better, maybe Bobby Valentine will be put in charge of the whole organization! Alas, these are the Mets, so none of those things will happen. But considering how terrible 2011 has been for the team so far, without having played a game of the season yet, how could it get any worse? more ›

Major League Baseball has approved at least three potential investor groups to make bids on the financially unsound Mets. The Mets owners' investment company, Sterling Equity, is in the midst of a complicated lawsuit stemming from perceived Madoff "profits"; the Wilpons have already agreed to sell a minority share of the team to offset any fiscal problems caused by the suit. But even if they sell 49 percent or less of the team, there's still a chance they may be forced to sell the team in the near future. more ›

One of the major points of contention in the ongoing legal struggle between the Mets owners and Irving Picard, who is the trustee representing a group of victims of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, is whether the Wilpons company Sterling Equity made "fictitious profits" from the scheme. The two sides were in court yesterday to plead their cases before a federal appeals panel, with one judge calling the profits “figments of the imagination.“ more ›

Mets CEO Fred Wilpon, whose reputation has taken a serious hit in recent weeks as his legal troubles have gotten more public, vowed to exonerate his name and hold onto his beloved team yesterday. "We did not know one iota, one thing about Madoff's fraud. We didn't do anything wrong. If anything we trusted a friend for a very long time. As I told you a few months ago, that betrayal is very difficult for me because this was a man, we were friends for 35 years and investors for 25 years. Having said that, we will be vindicated," said Wilpon, while with the team in Port St. Lucie, Fla. for spring training. more ›

Looks like Iriving Picard, the trustee in charge of finding Bernie Madoff's missing money, saved the best for last. Picard has until tomorrow, the second anniversary of Madoff's arrest, to file claims in the case and today he dropped a doozy: he is seeking $16.9 billion from an Austrian banker named Sonja Kohn. According to the suit “in Sonja Kohn, Madoff found a criminal soul mate, whose greed and dishonest inventiveness equaled his own.” Dealbook explains that this suit is the first to make a racketeering charge, under the RICO act which "allows for the recovery of triple damages." But she looks like such a nice lady! more ›

A group of Brooklyn homeowners say they've fallen victim to a Park Slope Ponzi-schemer who convinced them to pay up-front for kitchen and bathroom repairs—then delivered sub-par work, if he did any work at all. At least eight victims are pursuing legal proceedings against Brooklyn Kitchens and Baths owner Brian Ackerman, who allegedly owes the customers about $60,000 for unfinished or unsatisfactory work. 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." more ›

Hindsight is 20/20: The NY Times reports the country's "largest independent securities regulator found that its staff members had missed numerous red flags that would have uncovered frauds run by Bernard L. Madoff and the Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford." Apparently the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s "predecessor, NASD, did not act from 2003 to 2005 on 'credible information from at least five different sources claiming that the Stanford C.D.’s were a potential fraud.'" While no whistleblowers specifically contacted Finra about Madoff (the SEC was warned), Finra did find " several facts worthy of inquiry...that, with the benefit of hindsight, should have been pursued." more ›

Invest $2 million and grow it to nearly $4 million in 8 years—that's what one investor in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme did. Of course, all that disappeared last December, where the fraud was revealed. The fight to compensate Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme victims will drag on for a while, so until then, we're going to get stories from victims. New York Magazine indulges with some of them this week. more ›

Bernard Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme, which is still be investigated by federal prosecutors and securities regulators, has resulted in far more claims from victims than expected. 8,800 claims had been filed by victims by the start of last month, but the finally tally of claims is actually 15,400, according to an interim report [pdf] filed yesterday by the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff’s estate. The trustee tells the Times he's "unearthed a labyrinth of international funds, institutions and entities of almost unparalleled complexity." The claims include 258 applications to the trustee’s hardship program, which is supposed to fast-track reimbursement to victims who are elderly, bankrupt, or unable to pay for basic living expenses or medical needs. (152 of those claims have been approved.) Meanwhile, Madoff's lawyers have announced that he won't appeal the 150-year sentence, which means he'll almost certainly die behind bars. But every six months he can look forward to a big shipment of letters from his irate victims; the website Madoff Mail is now accepting hate mail and e-mail, and promises to deliver them to the phony financier twice a year. more ›

The tangled web of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme has prompted some of his victims to ask a federal bankruptcy judge to recalculate their losses. The NY Times reports, "The customers say that, by law, they should be given credit for the full value of the securities shown on the last account statements they received before Mr. Madoff’s arrest in mid-December, even though they were bogus and none of the trades were ever made"—which means $64 billion would be at stake. However, "trustee, Irving H. Picard, is calculating investor losses as the difference between the total amount a customer paid into the scheme and the total amount withdrawn before it collapsed." The plaintiffs' lawyer says, "Under the trustee’s approach, thousands of people will not get a dime. That doesn’t seem fair to me." The next question is, should some plaintiffs have been suspicious of the ridiculously high returns (46%, 950%)? Cue up this December 2008 quote from a victim: "The point with him was that I always got every document. If you get all the documents, you are not suspicious." more ›

Yesterday, it was revealed that inmate No. 61727-054 Metropolitan Correctional Center—a.k.a. Bernard Madoff—was worth around $823-826 million. His lawyers filed an appeal to get Madoff out of jail and listed his assets. more ›

HSBC's net profits in 2008 were down a breathtaking 70% from 2007, dropping from $19.13 to $5.73 billion, the London-based bank announced today. During a conference call with reporters, CEO Niall Booker said the bank will scale back its U.S. consumer-lending operations, closing its HSBC Finance Corp. and Beneficial brands, causing a loss of 6,100 jobs. (According to Crain's, there are two locations of each in NYC.) The retail-bank-branch and credit card business in the U.S. will remain intact, but HSBC's 2003 expansion in the consumer loan market is being written off as an epic fail. In a statement, HSBC said, "Management believes it will take years before property values return to the levels seen prior to the decline and, as such, has concluded that recovery in the sub-prime mortgage lending business is uncertain and the industry is unlikely to stabilize for a number of years." Executives also confirmed today that HSBC, which is Europe's biggest bank, lost about $1 billion to Bernard Madoff's fraud! more ›

In his $6.6 million divorce settlement two years ago, big shot real-estate lawyer Steven Simkin (pictured) paid his ex-wife Laura Blank $2.7 million to buy out her half of their Madoff investment, which he thought was worth $5.4 million. Now, according to his attorneys, the "account" is worthless, "literally not worth the paper on which the parties' valuation rested." So Simkin wants some of that money back, because "Laura has been unjustly enriched, having received millions of dollars based on an illusory and exaggerated value attributed to the 'account.'" Blank, who works for CUNY, tells the Post she isn't really feeling Simkin's pain: "What he's doing is outrageous. He made a poor investment choice and it's his problem." Just as every bum's lot in life is his own responsibility, regardless of who he chooses to blame! more ›