A U.S. District Court judge ruled that a court-appointed trustee recovering money for investors in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme could not recover the full amount he sought from New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon and his associates,
the Associated Press reported.
The trustee, Irving Picard, had brought a lawsuit seeking $1 billion from Wilpon and other Mets executives. Judge Jed Rakoff said Picard can seek to recover up to $295 million in fictitious profits that he claims were paid to the Mets’ owners but added that he has not yet decided whether Picard could recover only $83.3 million, which the Mets owners accumulated in the two years before a bankruptcy court filing, the article said. Picard could recover the money only by proving the defendants knew about the fraud, the report noted.
“Lawyers for the Mets have repeatedly denied Picard’s claim that executives should have known millions they collected from Madoff represented phony profits,” the article said. (Source: Associated Press, Sept. 28, 2011.)
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