ProPublica's article, "Madoff Client Jeffry Picower Netted $5 Billion--Likely More Than Madoff Himself", is a must-read for anyone following the Madoff saga. 

Jake Bernstein does a fabuous job sifting through data in court records about Jeffry Picower, a so-called Madoff "investor". He determined that Picower and his family members withdrew an astonishing $5.1 billion more from BMIS than they deposited between 1995 and 2008. The ProPublica staff lays it all out in an easy-to-follow chart that accompanies the article.

This raises all kinds of questions about the real relationship between Bernie and Picower. Why in the world would Bernie give so much money away without himself benefitting? Or was Picower in cahoots with Bernie?

Whatever the answer, Jeffry and the rest of the Picowers were certainly not Madoff victims as they were initially portrayed when the Madoff scandal broke.    

Huge development in the Madoff case today!

The SEC today filed civil fraud charges against Cohmad Securities and Cohmad principals, Maurice "Sonny" Cohn, 78, and his daughter, Marcia Beth Cohn, 49. Cohmad agent and Palm Beach society swell, Robert Jaffe, 65, was also charged.

The actual complaint is worth a read because it spells out how Cohmad marketed the Madoff investments and how information about the investments was deliberately concealed from the SEC (a point that was laid on with a heavy hand and somewhat self-serving on the SEC's part).

Maurice "Sonny" Cohn and his brother, Milton "Bud" Cohn (who was not charged) from a front page article in the North Shore-LIJ 2008 winter newsletter about the generosity of the Cohns. Also featured on the front page is an article about the generosity of mobster Thomas "Tommy" Gambino.

This photo from a Vanity Fair article was taken at one of Bernie's company outings at Montauk. Marcia Beth Cohn is in the middle. To the left is Peter Madoff and to the right is Cohn's girlfriend, Elaine Solomon, who was Peter Madoff's secretary.

Robert Jaffe, son-in-law of Carl Shapiro, a wealthy Madoff investor from Boston.  Jaffe recruited many Madoff customers in Palm Beach who, according to the SEC, invested $1 billion with Bernie. Shapiro is also under investigation in the Madoff case.

In early January, I wrote about the likelihood of Cohn's involvement in the fraud and in another post, I speculated about the nature of Cohn Delaire & Madoff, Inc. registered in NY in 1986. The company dissolved itself in June 1992, only months before the SEC charged Avellino & Bienes with selling more than $430 million in unregistered securities. Was CD&M an early feeder fund that the SEC let slip by?

According to the SEC, Cohmad ownership by percentage is as follows:

Maurice Cohn - 48%
Marcia Beth Cohn - 25%
Bernie Madoff - 15%
Peter Madoff  - 9%
Milton Cohn - 1%
Rosalie Buccellato - 1%

(Note: Buccellato was not named by the SEC but she is listed in a FINRA report on Cohmad.) 

Alvin Delaire, a longtime Cohmad agent, was not charged in the case and there is some speculation that he assisted the Madoff investigators with their inquiries.

One of the best articles about Cohmad is Nina Mehta's "It's a Cohmad, Mad, Mad World" posted at her blog, MehtaFiscal.    

There is also a lot of speculation as to what exactly SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz discussed with Bernie for three hours last week since the case against Cohmad was already in the can. Keep in mind Kotz himself made the trip from DC to the Metropolitian Correction Center.

The SEC also charged Stanley Chais for being a financial idiot who still managed to make $250 million in fees by convincing his equally unsophisticated customers to sink $900 million into his various investment vehicles. Chais apparently told Bernie never to show a loss on an equity trade so Bernie didn't. Ever. 

The Chais complaint can be read here.  

More to come.  

The story is there is no story. Six months after the biggest fraud in history was exposed, not one article about Joann "Jodi" Crupi's background has been published even though Crupi, 48 years old, worked on the 17th floor for twenty-five years and handled all of the money for the investment advisory business. 

Frank DiPascali, check, Annette Bongiorno, check.  Joann Crupi, not even a photo. 

When the bankruptcy trustee issued a report last month about BMIS paying personal expenses incurred by employees, news that Bernie gave Crupi $2.7 million last year got scant attention in comparison to Ruth Madoff's crummy little $5k Paris shopping trip.

Crupi apparently used most of the money to finance the purchase of a $2.25 million house in Mantoloking, an exclusive community on the Jersey Shore. The sales contract dated 6/2/2008 was signed by both Crupi and her girlfriend, Judith G. Bowen.

1081 Barnegat Drive, Mantoloking, NJ

When the sale was officially recorded on 1/2/2009, the property was in Bowen's name only but whether the closing was held before or after Bernie's arrest is not clear. What I think is clear is that Crupi had concerns about owning an attachable asset.

According to BMIS bank statements provided by the trustee, the $2.7 million was wired to Crupi's lawyers, Guston & Guston, in two increments: $475k on 6/25/2008 and $2.25 million on 10/16/2008. The trustee did not disclose whether the money was recorded as taxable income in BMIS payroll records.

(Also listed on the 10/16 bank statement was a $1.2 million wire transfer purportedly withdrawn from Annette Bongiorno's "Ruann" account and wired into a Citibank account held in her and her husband's name . The trustee did not disclose whether the money benefited Bongiorno or a Ruann customer.)  

How did Joann Crupi become such a trusted insider? Crupi appears to be a former resident of Howard Beach like her coworkers, DiPascali and Bongiorno. A search website listed 155-46 79th St. in Howard Beach as one of her former addresses which could mean Crupi was brought in by Bongiorno or DiPascali.

Looking at a map, Crupi, Bongiorno, DiPascali and a number of Madoff customers with a Howard Beach address actually lived in Lindenwood, a section of Howard Beach cut off from the rest of the neighborhood by the Belt Parkway. Lindenwood is primarily made up of two-family houses and garden apartments unlike the section of Howard Beach where John Gotti lived in a single family house.

Some time prior to 1997, Crupi bought a house in Westfield NJ in her name only. In 1997, she sold that house and bought another one with Bowen on Grove St. in Westfield for $412k which they still own.

In January, Business Insider asked about the nature of two companies registered by Crupi in Nevada, EastVest LLC and Murphy Girl, LLC. No information was forthcoming.

EastVest, registered in 2000, lists Crupi and Bowen as managing members along with Joan Taaffe and Tonia Dillon. Taaffe is listed as a Madoff customer with a Westfield address but Dillon is not. One commenter suggested that Dillon is in the securities industry which might be verified through FINRA's BrokerCheck.

EastVest was dissolved on 4/24/2004.

Murphy Girl LLC was registered on 9/26/2005 and is still active. The only managing members listed are Crupi and Bowen. When Crupi registered the company, she used an address in Las Vegas which appears to have been the home of her parents.

EastVest and Murphy Girl may have been legitimate businesses that had nothing to do with BMIS but the point is Crupi obviously has enough business acumen to know how to form corporations out-of-state which means she was financially sophisticated enough to appreciate the enormity of Bernie's Ponzi scheme and her role in it.

Despite what Irving Picard, bankruptcy trustee, would have us believe, the employees on the 17th floor were not all dummies who couldn't have been expected to figure out what was going on because they never got past high school. Picard is a snob to the nth degree and he is a prime example of why this fraud lasted as long as it did.

Did Lev Dassin, the acting US attorney handling the Madoff case, make the same mistake as Picard and assume that a high school grad from Howard Beach couldn't have been instrumental in carrying out Bernie's scheme? 

In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that the prosecutors had a proffer agreement with Crupi which means the prosecutors agreed not to use any statements made by Crupi against her as long as she told the truth. According to the WSJ, the prosecutors' strategy was to find out what the low-level employees knew about their supervisors and work up the ladder.

If the Feds characterized Crupi as a low-level employee and gave her immunity from prosecution, they were conned just like Bernie's customers and this may explain why no one other than Bernie and his CPA, David Friehling, have been indicted since Bernie was arrested more than six months ago.

Is Lev Dassin trying to drag out the Madoff investigation as long as he can to obscure his mistakes? The public's interest in the case is flagging which certainly works to his advantage and that of the wrongdoers.

Hmm...