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Law Humor

: Bernard Madoff

Two Craziest Madoff Court Rulings In Same Week-Mets At Bat

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First, let me send a big shout out to my long time pal Fred Wilpon, who everyone knows is the owner of the NY Mets. I trusted in you that my favorite baseball team would once again be world famous and now that we are on deck to play in the World Series, this is the time to be offering stakes at a higher valuation. Go Mets!

Now, who would have guessed that near-on seven years later, there are still crazy and wacky cases still going through the court system, and that two of those cases would draw front page headlines in the same week. Its a Mad, Mad World!

The first case involves those smart folks over at global accounting and audit firm Ernst & Young, more affectionately known as E&Y. In that Bloomberg LP headline "Ernst & Young Confronts Madoff's Specter..

FutureSelect Portfolio Management Inc., which lost $112 million in its investment in the feeder fund, says Ernst & Young was reckless in its review. The purported assets weren?t just exaggerated; they didn?t even exist, FutureSelect says.

Ernst & Young calls its sign-off reasonable based on generally accepted auditing standards, which the firm ?scrupulously? followed. The case boils down to second-guessing a review that can provide only ?reasonable assurance? that a client?s financial statements are correct, the firm says.

?No audit of a Madoff-advised fund could have detected this Ponzi scheme,? Amy Call Well, an Ernst & Young spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. ?EY was not the auditor of any Madoff entity, we were among the many auditors of funds that chose to use Madoff as their investment adviser.?

Puhlease!!! Are you f--king kidding me?!

The next story is too classic for words, but the WSJ had a bunch of them when reporting that my old pal Noel Tucker from Fairfield Sentry won another lottery ticket this week when a Federal court judge ruled that Noel was allowed to 'break the trade' he made when he sold the $230 million claim he had filed with Irv Picard to a Cayman Island hedge fund. Noel puked on the claim and sold it for $70mil and two days later, Jeff Picower texted in the grave and told his wife to give up $7billion of the closer to $12billion that I sent his way. And that $7bil settlement made Noel's claim value go from $70mil to nearly $150mil. And the hedge fund guys were partying their brains out. Then Noel backed out of the trade before sending over the settlement documents and told the hedge fund guys to go fuck themselves. Then they sued...And guess what?

Oct. 15, 2015 1:02 p.m. ET

A bankruptcy judge agreed to undo the sale of a $230 million claim against Bernard Madoff?s liquidating investment firm, offering hopes of a higher recovery to certain Madoff investors.

Judge Stuart Bernstein of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan this week said he?d break off the sale of the claim, currently held by major Madoff feeder fund Fairfield Sentry Ltd. Fairfield, a British Virgin Islands fund that funneled nearly all of its investors? cash to Mr. Madoff, had sought to undo a pending sale of the claim after a massive settlement with another of Mr. Madoff?s investors dramatically changed the playing field and drove up the price such claims were fetching on the secondary market.

In the litigation that arose over Fairfield?s bid to break off the deal with proposed buyer Farnum Place LLC, early rulings didn?t give Fairfield hope?that is, until the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in. In an opinion issued last fall, the Second Circuit found that lower courts erred in declining to reconsider the sale and directed the bankruptcy court to do so.

Fairfield was granted a $230 million claim against Mr. Madoff?s investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, in connection with the losses its investors suffered when Mr. Madoff?s massive Ponzi scheme came to light in 2008.

Both Mr. Madoff?s firm and Fairfield went into liquidation after the fraud?s exposure.
airfield later agreed to sell that claim to Farnum Place for nearly $74 million, court papers show. Sales of such claims are common, as they help sellers get a quick payment and allow buyers to make a bet that they?ll collect more on the claim than what they pay for it.

Shortly after the claim sale was negotiated, however, a landmark $7 billion settlement with another of Mr. Madoff?s investors was reached that dramatically increased the amount of money available to repay those cheated in the fraud. As a result, trading prices for claims against Mr. Madoff?s firm soared, making the proposed sale of the Fairfield claim a potential windfall for Farnum Place but not such a good deal for Fairfield.

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Full post as published by Bernard Madoff on October 18, 2015 (boomark / email).