Posted on 12/27/2008 3:19:49 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
'Forrest Gump' Eric Roth screenwriter sues over Madoff losses
BY SOO YOUN and OWEN MORITZ
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Saturday, December 27th 2008, 1:21 AM
The writer of a string of Hollywood hits - including "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" - sued his investment manager Friday for losing a bundle in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
Screenwriter Eric Roth claims his "trusted investment manager," Stanley Chais, "simply handed off" his money to Madoff while collecting "enormous fees."
When he learned of his "heavy" losses last week: Roth exclaimed: "I'm the biggest sucker who ever walked the face of the Earth. The tragedy is the people who lost their life savings and their dreams."
Madoff is accused of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme on charities, Yeshivas and high-rollers around the world, including New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon.
In papers filed in Los Angeles, Roth - also authored the screen versions of "Forrest Gump" and "The Horse Whisperer" - claims he suffered "massive losses" at the hands of Chais.
Roth, listing himself as the trustee for Vanessa Productions Ltd. profit-sharing plan, charged Chais "funneled to Madoff the billions of dollars in investment capital that he needed to perpetuate his confessed Ponzi scheme."
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Too many high rollers in this to fail.
That is stooge/moron Chris Cox' purview
What a failure
James Cramer slams him in a twice a week rant
Powerful forces are giving Cox his marching orders
Anyone else notice this?
He's on meds. Has to be
I didn't pay for Enron and I'm not paying for Madoff... Madoff was paying his chosen few 18% - doubling their money every four years. And he did that for years. Madoff's older investors should pay his newer investors.
When it's too good to be true, it's either not that good or not that true...
When put like that, it really IS insulting. The premise that good Jews don't rip off anyone BUT nonJews? Whoa - if that was it, eff 'em. There must be a third...
At least there wasn’t any of that initiative robbing over-regulation going on.
LEGAL PRINCIPLE This should foreclose any cockamamie ideas that taxpayers are gonna bailout these mega-millionaires.----the compelling legal principle of “condonation” operating here---implied forgiveness for certain behavior. Meaning investors implicitly “condoned” Madoff’s actions over a period of time--sometimes decades.
His investors willingly acquiesced to Madoff's activities in several ways:
(1) Sending Madoff enormous sums of money, sums that were spread out over time (some families invested for generations), even AFTER they had the opportunity to assess their investments;
(2) Referring other investors to Madoff (if the investment was so bad, why did they bring in other investors?);
(3) Taking profits out of the investment, rolling it over, or putting more money in;
(4) Writing PERSONAL checks to Madoff's subrosa spinoff vehicle that was not listed on the Securities Exchange (tax evasion modus);
(5) Accepting, without question, Madoff’s obviously flawed monthly statements.
============================================
REFERENCE BY Ronald D. Orol, a MarketWatch reporter, based in Washington.
EXCERPT There were several things that alerted some in the hedge-fund industry that an investment with Madoff may not have been as safe as it initially appeared. Aksia LLC, which researches hedge funds and advises institutions about investing in the industry, said that it never recommended that clients put money in some of the "feeder funds" that allocated their capital to Madoff. On the surface, these feeder funds looked like institutional-quality vehicles, but there were "a host of red flags," Aksia Chief Executive Jim Vos and colleague Jake Walthour wrote in a letter to clients after the Madoff scandal erupted last week.
The funds were marketed as using a "split-strike conversion" investment strategy that is "remarkably" simple, but the returns it purportedly generated could not be replicated by Aksia's quantitative analyst, Vos and Walthour wrote.
The Madoff funds supposedly traded in the Standard & Poor's 100 index options market, but that market is relatively small and may not have been able to handle trading by vehicles with roughly $13 billion in assets, they said. The feeder funds had almost all their assets custodied with Madoff Securities, the brokerage unit of Madoff's firm.
Aksia checked into the auditor of Madoff Securities and discovered it was a firm called Friehling & Horowitz, which had three employees -- one of whom was 78 years old and another was a secretary. The firm's office in upstate New York was 13 feet by 18 feet, Vos and Walthour said. Madoff's Web site claimed the firm was technologically advanced, but it sent paper confirmations of trades via U.S. mail at the end of each day, rather than providing electronic access to this important information. "Paper copies provide a hedge-fund manager with the end-of-the-day ability to manufacture trade tickets that confirm the investment results," Vos and Walthour wrote.
Perhaps Philip Roth could tell the Madoff tale in a reprise of "Our Gang"
Then again an aggrieved party just might hire Frank Nitti to make Bernie Madoff go away
Sorry no can do.....the Nitti's moved into Solid Waste Management, Environmental Remediation and Municipal Service contracts a generation ago. I understand some Russian gentlemen headquartered in Brooklyn have taken over the service you mention.
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