Chalk up another tragic ending connected to Bernard Madoff’s con - and another door likely nailed shut for investigators.
Jeffry M. Picower, the Florida billionaire who had come under growing suspicion as the single, largest beneficiary of Madoff’s fraud, did not die by his own hand like French hedge fund investor Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, or retired British Army Officer William Foxton.
The prominent philanthropist was found by his wife Sunday at the bottom of the swimming pool at his oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, FL. An autopsy found that he drowned after suffering a heart attack.
The 67-year-old, who withdrew $7 billion more than he invested with Madoff, had a history of heart problems as well as Parkinson’s disease, his lawyer, William D. Zabel, told The New York Times.
By all accounts, the accountant-turned-financial investor had been under a huge strain since Madoff’s arrest last December. Picower and his wife, Barbara, were forced to shut the Picower Foundation, whose endowment was entirely invested with Madoff’s firm. At the time it closed, the philanthropy had given $238 million to causes ranging from the Children’s Aid Society to a new center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study the brain.
But the pressure on Picower became much more intense last spring, after a civil lawsuit questioned his complicity in his longtime friend’s scam. Irving Picard, the trustee charged with liquidating Madoff’s estate, filed suit against the Picowers demanding repayment of $5 billion – later increasing the sum to $7 billion. That was the amount the trustee contends they took out of their accounts beyond what they invested.
Picard contends in court papers that “sophisticated” investors like the Picowers “knew or should have known they were profiting from fraud” because of the implausibly high rates of return on their accounts, including some as high as 500 percent or even 950 percent a year. Picard also asserts that one Picower account was overdrawn by $6 billion when Madoff was arrested last December.
Moreover, this was not Picower’s first encounter with financial fraud. In 1990, he went to great lengths to recover some of the the money he had invested in Ivan Boesky’s biggest arbitrage fund after Boesky pleaded guilty to securities fraud.
Picower denied knowing anything about Madoff’s fraud, however, and was never charged criminally. Earlier this month, he and his wife told the Times, in a written response to a reporter’s questions, that the scandal had exacted an emotional and physical toll.
“We always have been private people and having all this play out in the media has taken a big toll on our health,” the couple wrote. “We feel stunned, betrayed, angry, sickened, devastated.”
Their lawyer said they had initiated settlement discussions with the trustee to avoid years of litigation.
Picard indicated that he planned to continue pursuing his claims against Picower’s estate and other family members on behalf of defrauded investors.
Now, however, neither he, nor anyone else is likely to unravel the complicated strands of Picower’s involvement with the man who managed to pull off one of the world’s largest frauds.
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1 Comments
#1. truthseeker 11.10.2009
So, now it all comes together. It was Michael Bienes, who was married to Jeffrey Picower’s sister who made the introduction to Bernie Madoff. Bienes was working for Madoff’s father in law Saul Alpern at the time and he and Frank Avellino became the first feeders in the fraud. Since then, Bienes dumped his first wife, cut off all contact with his children and remarried growing fabulously rich off the skim and deriving narcissistic supply down in South Florida and London where he was lauded for his “philanthropy”. Irony of ironies, a convert to Catholicism, he was even Knighted by the Florida Archdiocese!
Michael Bienes and Jeffrey Picower are two criminals who assuaged their guilt with so called philanthropy. Every goddamned cent they stole should be returned to compensate the victims. The trustee should not confuse these insiders with true victims of Madoff’s crime.
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