Two weeks before the owners of the New York Mets and the trustee hunting for money for victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme were scheduled to go to trial, former New York governor Mario Cuomo requested a meeting. Cuomo, a court-appointed mediator, wanted to explain to Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz the risks of trial, including the possibility of losing the case — or winning and having to fight an appeal. Cuomo, who struck out when he tried to settle the case a year earlier, knew Wilpon and Katz were concerned about their reputations. The trustee’s $1 billion lawsuit claimed they had built their empire by turning a blind eye to Madoff’s fraud. Read Reuters report [...]

The time-honored “I know nothing” defense has less credence for officers and directors of corporations. That is at least one message from the settlement announced Monday between Irving H. Picard, the trustee overseeing recovery for the victims of the Bernard L. Madoff fraud, and the Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz. Before the settlement, Mr. Picard was pursuing a suit accusing the two of being willfully blind to signs that Mr. Madoff was running a scam. Mr. Wilpon and Mr. Katz had argued that they “knew nothing” of Mr. Madoff’s fraud even though they were close friends of Mr. Madoff’s before he pleaded guilty to the Ponzi scheme. Read New York Times report [...]

Even after more than a year of correspondence with me, Bernie Madoff wasn’t quite finished bashing the Madoff trustee and proclaiming his former honesty as a money manager. On Saturday, March 17 — after Forbes managing editor extraordinaire Tom Post had tucked my magazine article about our pen pal relationship into bed – Madoff sent me a late-night email that returned to his constant theme: Despite what the trustee claims, Madoff was once a legitimate money manager before he became a crook. More in Forbes here.
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A day after the Mets had perhaps their most fortuitous moment since Bill Buckner was manning first base 26 years ago, the news of the settlement between the Mets’ owners and the Madoff trustee promised no immediate relief for thousands of smaller investors who were swindled by the world’s greatest Ponzi schemer. So says Helen Davis Chaitman, a New York attorney who represents some 350 Madoff investors who are facing clawback lawsuits filed by trustee Irving Picard. Read New York Daily News report [...]

Bernie Madoff hated e-mail. He rarely used it at his high-tech Wall Street trading firm. When others did, he fretted about the trail it left behind. He wasn’t crazy about letters, either. A staffer had standing orders to destroy his correspondence with one important client. Even after December 2008, when the world learned that ­Madoff had run the largest Ponzi scheme in history, few personal letters surfaced. He always preferred to deal with people face-to-face. In September 2010, in the first months of this intensifying isolation, Bernie Madoff became my pen pal–forced by captivity to rely almost entirely on e-mail and letters to carry out his last, desperate mission. Read more in Forbes [...]