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Madoff's Slippers, Piano Can Be Yours at AuctionFeds to Sell Disgraced Financier's Personal Items in NYC; All Proceeds Will Benefit His Wronged Investors NEW YORK, Oct. 20, 2010 (AP) More than 400 of Bernard Madoff's possessions are heading for the auction block in New York City. The items include Madoff's black velveteen slippers, embroidered in gold with "BLM," a Steinway piano and his wife Ruth's 10.5-carat diamond ring. The U.S. Marshals Service will be selling the disgraced financier's personal items on Nov. 13 at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers. They are the last items taken from Madoff's Manhattan...

Hundreds of Ponzi king Bernard Madoff's victims today challenged the latest bill from his bankruptcy trustee, which seeks more than $34 million for 120 days of work. The Aug. 20 bill, for services rendered between Feb. 1 and May 31, works out to more than $5,000 a day for court-appointed trustee Irving Picard and more than $283,000 a day for his firm, Baker & Hostetler, court papers say. "On an annualized basis, this would be $104,900,950," according to the objection filed by Diane and Roger Peskin, Maureen Ebel and "several hundred" other unnamed Madoff investors. [Snip] Picard spokesman Kevin...

The court-appointed trustee recovering money for Bernard L. Madoff's victims is preparing a wave of new lawsuits seeking to wrest funds away from investors who also were duped by the Ponzi scheme. In an interview, Irving Picard said he could wind up suing about half the estimated 2,000 individual investors he has called "net winners" from their dealings with Mr. Madoff. Such investors withdrew more from Mr. Madoff's firm than the amount of principal they invested. "The people who made money, who got more, have made money at the expense of the people who didn't," said Mr. Picard, who has...

Ponzi king Bernard Madoff is telling fellow jailbirds that he secretly funneled $9 billion in swiped funds to three people before he was nabbed, an inmate told The Post. Madoff says that his partner in crime Frank DiPascali knows who the recipients are -- and that he suspects DiPascali is using that information to cut a better deal with the feds, according to the inmate at the medium-security prison in Butner, NC.

Bernard Madoff has mocked the investors he swindled out of $65bn (£45bn), reportedly saying that he "carried them" for 20 years and that he took money from "greedy" rich people who wanted more. The revelations come from an extended piece in New York Magazine, in which fellow inmates discussed Madoff's behaviour and actions during his time at New York's Metropolitan Correctional Centre (MCC) and the federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, where he is serving his sentence. During his time at the MCC, he reportedly told one fellow prisoner that the crime was not fully of his own making, and...

Apparently, the jail-house harassment is getting to Bernard Madoff. First, the federal Bureau of Prisons said the convicted swindler was treated at a prison medical center for dizziness and hypertension back in December. Then the Wall Street Journal reported that his trip to the infirmary was caused by a beat down from a fellow inmate, identified as a "beefy man." Now, New York Magazine reports, Madoff cracked when another inmate chided him for bilking his victims out of billions of dollars. "F*** my victims," Madoff allegedly snapped, loud enough for other inmates to hear. "I carried them for twenty years,...

Bernie Behind Bars: Madoff’s Prison Life Checking in on one of New York's most notorious swindlers. Wondering how poor Bernie Madoff is faring in prison? New York magazine's Steve Fishman talked to dozens of current and former inmates at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, who described an unrepentant Madoff who signs autographs and boasts of his fraud. On one occasion at the prison, known as “Camp Fluffy,” Madoff was being badgered by a fellow inmate about his crimes, reports Fishman. “F--k my victims,” Madoff reportedly said. “I carried them for 20 years, and now I’m doing 150...

The Washington Post headline reads: Theater J pulls Madoff play after objections from activist Elie Wiesel. What caught my eye was this: The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity had all its assets, $15.2 million, invested with Madoff and lost them when the Ponzi scheme unraveled. In addition, Wiesel personally lost several million dollars to Madoff. Somehow I never pictured Elie Wiesel a multi-millionaire. Neither did I picture him at the center of a foundation worth tens of millions of dollars. Or someone foolish enough to put all of his eggs in one basket. That part of being a famous Nazi...

Don't you just love it when rich executives get implicated in corporate scandals and the media starts asking obvious questions, like "Didn't anyone see this coming?" "Who is responsible for watching these guys?" And "Why weren't they caught sooner?" While this scenario seems to play out every several years or so, the tale of Bernie Madoff and his billion-dollar Ponzi scheme seems to have topped them all. It was reported that when questioned in federal prison by a group of lawyers about his Ponzi scheme, Bernie Madoff said, "I'm surprised I wasn't caught sooner." Madoff went on to say that...

..... hedge-fund firm Ivy Asset Management is accused of hiding "disturbing facts" about Madoff from clients on fears the truth would crimp their revenue.....a civil lawsuit claims former CEO Lawrence Simon and ex-CIO Howard Wohl, were aware for some 10 years that Madoff's operation was suspect, but they "kept clients in the dark," pocketing $40M in advisory and due-diligence fees between 1998-2008 that led hundreds of investors, and dozens of NY union pensions and welfare plans, to lose a combined $227M.

Cap-And-Trade: While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House. Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore's appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation's philanthropic leaders. "Time's running out (on climate change)," Gore told them. "We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together." Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the...

The Securities and Exchange Commission knew since 1997 that R. Allen Stanford likely was operating a Ponzi scheme but waited 12 years to bring fraud charges against the billionaire, the agency inspector general said Friday. An SEC enforcement official who helped quash investigations of Stanford's business later legally represented him... The findings were the latest in a string of black eyes for the SEC, following a series of reports issued by Kotz's office last year that chronicled in detail how the agency bungled five investigations of financier Bernard Madoff's business between June 1992 and December 2008.

A group of legislators yesterday announced they've crafted a bill to outlaw current efforts to "claw back" money from victims of Ponzi King Bernie Madoff. Six members of Congress, including local US Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-Bayside) and Peter King (R-Long Island), unveiled legislation that would change how the Securities Investor Protection Corp. collects illegally obtained funds to give to Ponzi scheme victims. SIPC has been attacked for going after ill-gotten gains from Madoff victims who didn't know they were involved in the scam. SIPC argues that it's collecting from those who profited, even if unwittingly, to give to those who...

Bernie Madoff was a highly sought after money manager for the rich and famous. You had to be “somebody” before you could get an audience with this Ponzi schemer. Goldman Sachs was/is the crème de la crème of high finance investment firms. If a Goldman salesman called to offer to open an account for you, you knew you had “arrived.” Both scammed their customers out of billions and have left financial debris in their wake. What are the lessons we can take away? 1. Beware of “reputation” and the negative sell. “Are you good enough or rich enough to invest...

It’s not surprising that the Obama administration has delayed the annual report from the Social Security and Medicare trustees to reflect the impact of health care legislation. ObamaCare will show an immediate improvement in the finances of both programs — at least on paper. How real that improvement turns out to be is another question. In the case of Medicare, any improvement will be vastly overstated. That’s because the law prescribes cost cuts and tax increases that will flow to Medicare’s bottom line, even though the measures were approved as a way to pay for an insurance expansion that is...

Bernard Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence in North Carolina for running a fraud scheme that cost investors billions of dollars, was physically assaulted by another inmate in December, according to three people familiar with the matter. After the attack, Mr. Madoff, who pleaded guilty a year ago and was sent to a federal prison in Butner, N.C., was moved on Dec. 18 to the prison's low-security medical center for treatment. At the time, the Bureau of Prisons said that rumors of an assault were false and that Mr. Madoff suffered from dizziness and hypertension. One of his lawyers,...

CONVICTED fraudster Bernie Madoff, who is currently serving a 150-year sentence in a US jail, was bashed by a fellow inmate in December, a report says. A former inmate told The Wall Street Journal said the fight was centered on money the attacker thought he was owed by Madoff. He said a prison officer found Madoff lying wounded on a floor. Madoff was treated for a broken nose, fractured ribs and cuts to his head and face, according to another prisoner currently serving time on drug charges. Madoff pleaded guilty last year to tricking thousands of people out of billions...

I think Harry Markopolos would make an excellent SEC charimen, and posted my thoughts on same: http://bigdebtsmalllaw.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/why-coffee-trashed-harry/

The Securities Investor Protection Corp web site has an apparent imposter, i-sipc.com soliciting Madoff victims. A Nigerian scam sought to steal their personal info claiming they had $1.3 million in Madoff money stashed in Malaysia. Burned investors were urged to mail in their "most recent brokerage account statement." The shady group claimed to be based in Geneva, with ties to the UN and IMF but a search of the domain name showed Victor Oladipo, Nigeria, created the site last August.

The Boston man who served as a whistle-blower in the case against Bernard Madoff says he once was fully prepared to kill the disgraced stock broker. Former securities industry executive Harry Markopolos details in his new memoir, "No One Would Listen," how he was ready to kill Madoff if the broker ever attempted to take action against him, The Boston Herald said Sunday. "If (Madoff) contacted me and threatened me, I was going to go down to New York and take him out," Markopolos, 53, said in his book. "At that point, it would have come down to him or...