This Week’s Madoff News: Ruth Gets Sued, Bernie Gets Buff, Brokers Get Bitchy

After the powers that be decided there was no evidence linking her to her husband’s crimes, Ruth Madoff is off the criminal proceedings hook. But unfortunately that doesn’t mean she can escape civil proceedings, ie getting sued by the people who lost all their money and want some of it back.

Irving “Captain” Picard is the man whose job it is to scrabble around the metaphorical back of Bernie’s sofa to try and find some money to give back – so far he’s found $1bn, so now just has $64bn to go. His next target is Ruth, who he claims, despite her giving back all but $2.5m in assets last month, should pony up $44.8m. He cited the “inequity between Mrs Madoff’s continuing financial advantages and the economic distress of Madoff’s customers”. Hey! This is the woman last seen clipping coupons so she can get a cheap salad for lunch! Not really sure how the maths on this one is going to add up – she’s given back nearly everything she can. Plus the basis of the case on the premise that Ruth had “no good faith basis to believe she was entitled ” to the money her husband was making is shaky at best, considering that in the eyes of the law she wasn’t aware of the fraud. 

In other Madoff ephemera, we get a little glimpse into the rarified, bitchy stratum that Manhattan luxury real estate brokers live in in the New York Observer. Listing the Madoff penthouse is obviously a big prize, but they weren’t happy about the way the selection process was conducted – they all had to wander round it together to check it out, rather than get an individual vetting. “It was a strange and, frankly, slightly insulting way to handle it”, one said. It sounds simply beastly! Put next to the kiddie charities that were left penniless though, and I’m sure the perspective will come raining through. And check this bit of finger-snapping bitchiness from one broker about the state of the place: “So not triple-mint”. Yes, they’re dealing in apartments so plush that just one or two “mints” won’t do.

Madoff himself meanwhile is adapting to prison life well enough – it sounds like he’s been doing some serious reps! “He looked pretty good and seems to be working out.. he looked a lot better than he has in some months since I’ve seen photographs of him”, said Joseph Cotchett, an attorney representing Madoff’s victims who met him in jail. Just can’t shake that image of Madoff doing chin-ups surrounded by respectfully nodding tattooed gang lords. Cotchett also said Madoff, while trying to protect Ruth from the aforementioned nastiness, “doesn’t give a shit” about his sons. Maybe Picard should turn his focus thataway.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | July 30, 2009 12:00PM |