Bernie Madoff's 2004 Zermatt Ski Trip
Jan
30
Nina Mehta is a New York-based reporter who writes about trading, the markets, and market structure for her employer Traders Magazine. In her "spare" time she periodically posts to her personal blog called Mehtafiscal. On Thursday January 29th 2009 Nina wrote a long post entitled Loyalty on the Slopes: Madoff Goes Skiing in 2004. This well-written article focuses on a 2004 ski trip to Zermatt Switzerland during which Bernie Madoff (and his wife Ruth Madoff) and Peter Madoff (and his wife Marion Madoff) hosted approximately thirteen friends and/or business associates. Most of those present had ties to Bernie's fraudulent investment advisory business.
Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") encourages readers interested in the Madoff fraud scandal to read Ms. Mehta's excellent work. In that piece the reader will learn more about Maurice ("Sonny") Cohn, Paul J. Konigsberg (and his wife Judy Konigsberg), Alvin J. Delaire Jr. (and his wife Carole Delaire), Marja Engler, her son Steven Engler and his wife Laura Engler as well as Elana Flax and her husband Dr. Herschel Flax of Great Neck, New York. As Ms. Mehta points out, it is unclear whether the final couple on that trip, Jean-Pierre Michaux and Patricia Michaux, had any ties to Bernie Madoff's investment business.
Collaborators? Victims?
Thank you for your insightful postings on the inner workings of the Madoff world. One thing puzzles me; so many of those who might be viewed as collaborators such as Jaffe, Avellino, Bienes, Konigsberg, etc, also appear to have been victimized by Madoff. What is your take on this? As far-fetched as it may appear, is it possible this victimization was part of the overall scam and meant as a ruse to draw attention away from these people and possibly provide them with a defense/alibi?
Probably Collaborators
You are welcome. Although I cannot yet point to any facts that definitively indicate that Jaffe, Avellino, Bienes, Konigsberg et al were collaborators in the Madoff fraud, I strongly suspect that they were more collaborators than victims. Surely they must have asked some hard questions before they began feeding funds to Madoff. Remember that Avellino & Bienes were guaranteeing investors returns of 13.5% to 20% on their notes (according to the 1992 settlement). How they could have made such guarantees without asking very probing questions of Bernie Madoff seems implausible.
I too have noted that all of the service providers to Bernie's investment management business claim to have invested in the pool and in many cases lost "considerable" wealth. Few though have revealed the magnitude of their losses. I have wondered whether their losses were simply from the fees Madoff paid to them or whether these individuals contributed other monies to their Madoff accounts. Hopefully in due course more information will emerge.
I for one look forward to learning more about what is included among those twenty million documents recently discovered in that Queens warehouse. Are there, for instance, complete, albeit false, account statements for each of these friends of Bernie (and probably also collaborators)? The lawsuits from this fraud are likely to keep lawyers busy for years. No doubt the Madoff documents are going to be used in a number of those suits.