Madoff Signs Over UES Apt., Hamptons
Home For Bond
Disgraced Investor Also Signs Over
Palm Beach Home; Assigned Curfew, Monitoring Bracelet
Wall
Street tycoon Bernard Madoff, whom one client says "made
off with the money" by allegedly bilking investors of
$50 billion, now has new conditions for his bail terms.
Now
under house arrest, Madoff returned home amid a crush of
cameras jostling for position after his bail was
modified. His wife and his brother co-signed his $10
million bond, but because he could not get two
additional co-signees, a judge set additional terms for
his bond.
Madoff, wearing a baseball cap and a black jacket, said
nothing to reporters as he walked out of the building
and drove away in an SUV. The 70-year-old former Nasdaq
chairman now has a curfew from 7 p.m. to 9 a.m. He must
wear an ankle-monitoring bracelet. He and his wife must
surrender their passports and sign over their three
homes – one on the Upper East Side, one in the Hamptons,
and one in Palm Beach – to cover the $10 million bond.
His apartment on the Upper East Side is worth $7 million
alone.
Madoff, smiling slightly, was surrounded by about two
dozen photographers who jostled each other for a good
position as he walked along the sidewalk.
Madoff's investment empire, conducted out of a Third
Avenue building, was to have been monitored by the
Securities and Exchange Commission, but it failed to do
so.
SEC Chairman Christopher Cox admitted that regulators
had received allegations, but failed to pursue them.
"Credible allegations about Mr. Madoff had been made,
over nearly a decade, and yet never referred to the
commission for action," said Cox.
Stuart Meissner,
a former prosecutor who is now a securities lawyer, says
the SEC was alerted several years ago from someone
within Madoff's firm.
"It's clear the
SEC dropped the ball," he said. "Having a whistleblower
on the inside is not typical. They should have taken it
much more seriously. They did not."
Officials say Madoff kept multiple sets of books for
more than a decade. Madoff's accountant, David Friehling,
who was supposed to exercise due diligence, had records
seized from his Rockland County office.
It was a house of cards that prosecutors are calling the
biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the U.S.
Among the investigators who had questioned Madoff in the
past – one was a lawyer who later married Madoff's
niece. That woman's father is Madoff's brother and was
also the firm's Chief Compliance Officer.
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