Results tagged “madoff”

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."

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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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!

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!