dont take my ill gotten gains! Madoff

[strollingbones]

His lawyers are arguing that Madoff should be entitled to keep the $7 million apartment he's currently being held in while under house arrest and $62 million, including $45 million in municipal bonds.

Court papers filed on Monday state that Madoff and his lawyer say the Manhattan penthouse and the millions held in accounts of Madoff's wife, Ruth, are not subject to seizure.

The court papers say Madoff claims the apartment and the money are unrelated to a $50 billion fraud Madoff has been accused of carrying out.

Madoff: NYC Penthouse, $62 Million Are Mine - wcbstv.com


chutzpah

 

[waltky]

Appeals court perpetuatin' the fraud...

Recovered Madoff money blocked by appeals
March 27, 2011 -- Getting the money back from Bernard Madoff is only half the battle for Irving Picard, the trustee in charge of recovering assets stolen in the world's most notorious Ponzi scheme.

Picard, appointed as trustee by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, plans to file a request to the court by the end of the month to start disseminating money from stolen assets back to the victims. However, the lion's share of the recovered money is being blocked by appeals from thousands of investors who consider themselves victims, but were excluded by the trustee. The trustee has recognized 2,408 claims, totaling nearly $6.9 billion, as legitimate. Although the trustee has already paid out $793 million from the insurance fund set up by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, he has yet to dole out any of the $10 billion recovered from Madoff's stolen assets.

That's because of the appeals related to the $7.2 billion Picower estate, which was surrendered to the trustee and federal authorities last Dec. 17. Barbara Picower inherited the estate from her husband Jeffry, who died of a heart attack in 2009. The trustee considers Jeffry Picower to have been greatest beneficiary of the Ponzi scheme, having withdrawn $7.8 billion from Madoff's firm since the 1970s, even though he only invested $619 million. Barbara Picower agreed to hand over the difference, some $7.2 billion, to give back to the victims. The majority of the 16,518 investors who filed Madoff claims with the trustee were rejected. More than 10,000 of those investors had their money in feeder funds, rather than having given it directly to Madoff, and were therefore excluded from SIPC protection.

Thousands of other investors were rejected -- and some of them have also been sued by Picard -- for allegedly profiting off the Ponzi scheme, even if they didn't know it was a scheme. James Beasley of the law firm Beasley Hauser Kramer & Galardi in West Palm Beach, Fla., is representing some 3,000 Madoff investors whose claims were rejected by the trustee because he considers them "net winners." These investors are accused of having withdrawn what they were told were profits from their investments - like skimming the interest off a legitimate bank account. But many of the so-called "winners" identify themselves as victims who were wiped out by Madoff, since the principal from which any profits were taken had vanished.

"The bankruptcy court, at the request of the trustee, says we cannot pursue the Picowers, for any reason," said Beasley. "We think that is completely wrong." The trustee's decision to treat some investors as victims deserving of compensation, while excluding or suing others for profiting from the alleged Ponzi scheme, is the basis for Beasley's appeal. Some of these victims were living off remittances from Madoff's firm and they believed his fraudulent statements claiming that their accounts were substantial. They lived accordingly, and had nothing left when the Ponzi scheme unraveled.

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[Mad Scientist]

If I'm a business owner who gets sued and loses, why should I lose my house as well? Isn't that why LLC's and Incorporations are created, so that the Lawyers can't take everything and you can at least keep your house?

(I'm not defending Madoff and his crimes, I'm just asking)