Bernie Madoff: ProPublica Slices & Dices Jeffry Picower's $5.1 BILLION Net Withdrawal
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.
Recently, you speculated that the status-consciousness of bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard and US Attorney Lev Dassin caused them to assume that Joann Crupi, “a high school grad from Howard Beach couldn't have been instrumental in carrying out Bernie's scheme”.
So is Jeffry Picower's social pedigree sufficient to support the proposition that he bamboozled some of the masters of the universe?
June 28, 2009 2:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure I'm the one to ask about Picower. I missed the significance of Picard's lawsuit against him until I read the article in ProPublica.
Picower, a lawyer and a CPA, certainly has the know-how to pull off a massive fraud. He sold illegal tax shelters in the '80s and got bagged by the SEC for not disclosing his interest in a publicly traded company, for starters.
Picower seems to have surrounded himself with people who have been with him a long time. I think he's had the same lawyer for years, William Zabel of Schulte Roth & Zabel.
I imagine the Feds will question Picower's representative, April Freilich, if they haven't already. She's the one who told DiPascali what profit the Picower Institute needed and she's been with Picower for decades.
One Picower entity left out of the lawsuit is Apple Securities Management. April Freilich is Apple's CEO. Apple had several Madoff accounts but I don't know if they were active.
I still don't understand how the money flowed in and out of BMIS.
Picower pulled out $5.1 billion over ten years and a recent article claimed $12 billion was pulled by other investors in 2008. That's more than $17 billion in ten years. Yet Picower is throwing out a total of $13 billion swindled.
If all that is true, BMIS had to have been making money some other way yet no one is saying what happened to surplus cash on hand during the last ten years.
June 28, 2009 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I forgot to mention that April Freilich is or was president of Decisions Inc., the entity that got most of the BMIS money. It would be difficult for Freilich to plead ignorance of what was going on at BMIS.
June 28, 2009 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
All quiet for the last 2 days at the horribly compromised NYTimes as (seemingly) momentous events unfold in the case they pretend doesn't exist. Ruthie (most hated woman in NYC) finally throws in the towel. But at last the penny drops! I almost can't believe what Mrs P.'s blog. has been subtly pointing out for weeks. Bernie Madoff is only the "Frank DiPascali" of this scheme. He is only the enabler, gofer and fall-guy. With incredible timing the government arranges for washed-up sleazebag Wacko Jacko to be taken out, thereby hogging the limelight that would otherwise fall on the Madoff sentencing circus. Only in America!
June 28, 2009 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
All quiet for the last 2 days at the horribly compromised NYTimes as (seemingly) momentous events unfold in the case they pretend doesn't exist. Ruthie (most hated woman in NYC) finally throws in the towel. But at last the penny drops! I almost can't believe what Mrs P.'s blog. has been subtly pointing out for weeks. Bernie Madoff is only the "Frank DiPascali" of this scheme. He is only the enabler, gofer and fall-guy. With incredible timing the government arranges for washed-up sleazebag Wacko Jacko to be taken out, thereby hogging the limelight that would otherwise fall on the Madoff sentencing circus. Only in America!
June 28, 2009 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink