Women Hoo Embarrass Women

MRS RUTH MADOFF: ASHAMED & ACHEY

Mrs. Ruth Madoff has broken her silence, now that her husband is gone-zo, locked-upped, and slammed away.
ABC news printed her statement.
Ruth is embarrassed. She is ashamed. Yadda yadda. You would be too if someone took your home and your boats and called them not yours anymore.
She feels betrayed. And confused. Poor Ruth.
Not a day goes by when Ruth does not ache, the deep ache-y break-y kind of ache, over the stories she has heard and read about the daily suffering all these innocent people are enduring because of her husband. For the record, these are not "stories"; these are people lives. Details, details.
Solution: if Ruth is really achey-break-y wrecked each and every day as she says, she could cure what ails her by taking her Bernie-leftover $2.5 million and buying a gigantic, fully furnished home with lots and lots of bedrooms to house at least some of the people whose "story" is that they cannot pay a mortgage today due to her husband, prisoner no. 560235.

RUTH MADOFF: GOOD TO GO WITH $2.5 M

Ruth has hit rock bottom.
She is nothing now but a multi-millionaire.
Poor thing.
Its reported she has cried uncle in connection with her claim to $80 million in assets.
Like that - snap - her homes in NY City, Palm Beach Florida and Long Island are gone. Poof. Like her boats. Imagine. Boatlessness, overnight. Surely some boatlessness support group can help get her through this.
At 68, with $2.5 million in her pocket, Ruth will be ok. More ok than her husband's friends/victims, for sure.
Now, with a few million bucks in hand, she can get about the business of working her way through her other Bernie-imposed big life problem:  being shunned by the hairdresser who had a special and long relationship with Ruth's now faded sun-kissed highlights.

RUTH MADOFF FIRED BY HER HAIRDRESSER

Thankfully, it's only a bob. And the color is relatively uniform. Because Bernie Madoff’s wife, Ruth, may have to take care of it herself soon. 

It is reported that Ruth has been asked - civilly of course - not to call for an appointment at her regular hair salon, the Pierre Michel Salon on East 57th.

First, her husband gets locked up. Then, her yacht gets taken away. Now this. Xanax cannot be far behind.

"The Pierre Michel salon’s clients are among some of Manhattan’s most elite," so said a rep for the salon, "Unfortunately, some of those clients were victims of Madoff, and therefore Pierre Michel didn’t feel comfortable having her in the salon."

We here at Whew! support Pierre Michel's posture. Sitting in a public place with slabs of painted aluminum foil resting in flaps on your head while darker paint clings to your temples is tough enough. It would be uber-humiliating to have all that going on on your head while you give the evil eye to the woman whose husband purposefully hosed you, your family, friends and neighbors.

According to its web site, Pierre Michel's will soon be out of Ruth's reach anyway. A haircut goes for $125 and up and highlights start at $200. 

MADOFF GIRL LOOKING FOR JAIL LESSONS

The New York Post reports that a Madoff girl, maybe compliance officer/niece Shana who was paid to sign Uncle Bernie's firm's papers, attesting to their accuracy, is thinking about prison life. And how to get by.

A Madoff girl has allegedly reached out to a white collar ex con who teaches a class Fedtime 101. 

The prior prisoner founded "Wall Street Prison Consultants". Why not develop a business plan that takes advantage of time behind bars?

Who would not need tips on how to survive uninteresting cement walls when accustomed to professional decor? And how do you pick the right co-prisoner to trust to give you a pedicure, anyway? I know this girl would sign up in a flash for "Hair Maintenance: How to Care for your Roots in the Big House" and "When Orange is Simply Not Your Color and Stripes Have Never Worked on You."

Read the full story in the Post here.

MADOFF SECRETARY LIVES MIGHTY WELL

So far, the only people in legal trouble in the Madoff scheme are Bernie and his accountant.

Fox 5 reports that it tracked down the woman who was Bernie's secretary for four decades. Sittin right there next to him all those years in that big ole lipstick building.

Annette Bongiorno is the name.

Annette has a million dollar home in Boca, Florida. In a gated community. (Me and my graduate degree enjoy the privacy split rail provides...)  When Annette is up north, its all about her two and a half million dollar home on Long Island.

Her three car garage provides comfort for two - why have one - 2007 Mercedes-Benzes. And a 2005 Bentley.

Other sources of real cash you ask? I dunno. But Fox 5 says Annette's husband is a former NY City worker out on permanent disability. And a relative of Annette's still lives in the blue collar community home she and Annette grew up in, together. 

I coulda been a secretary, woulda been a secretary, shoulda been a secretary...

Fox 5 makes clear that Annette has not been charged with any crime and that it has no direct evidence she committed any crime or that she knew about the Ponzi scheme. Fox 5 also says: "Sources close to the investigation say two of Bongiorno's assistants are describing how they were instructed to research daily share prices for blue-chip stocks from the previous month, then generate bogus trading tickets. Those tickets ensured customer statements looked legitimate with current and accurate stock numbers."

Full story here.

RUTH MADOFF'S SPOONS & BERNIE'S MONEY

Well, we knew Ruth has a lot of stuff. Some comfy homes smattered across the globe, some sailing vessels and a $39,000 piano upon which to display her fresh flowers. And, don't forget the $200 mittens she tried to send to relatives after Bernie fessed up.

Add to that another asset prosecutors intend to try to capture: a $65,000 silverware set.

Eating off forks that cost more than the average American earns in a year's time and then claiming, as Bernie did, that what drove him to scheme was a desire to meet "client expectations" in a down market is a tough swallow. 

Prosecutors will also go after four cars. Bernie and Ruth had four cars, of course. A BMW, two Mercedes, rumor has it, a Volkswagon.

When Ruth posted her husband's bond, she told prosecutors she had her own money that she inherited from her now dead parents. Not. Records show that the max she would have inherited from them was a bit over $1 million dollars after her father died.

Not possessing a million dollars myself, I don't know precisely how pricey my spoons would be if I had a million and needed to buy some new ones. Sorta thinkin' that I wouldn't spend nearing 10% of my net worth on them. Ruth needs to get busy spinning a new story for herself.

RUTH AND BERNIE'S STUFF

More detail on what Bernie, crook, and Ruth, cookbook author, had stashed away whilst lots of the people they duped had to start selling their homes to make ends meet:

Four homes. Manhattan, Montauk (where NY's well off summer; for really wealthy people, "summer" is a verb), Palm Beach, and the French Riviera.

$17 million in cash. Just in case.

$7 million yacht in France. Name: The Bull

$2.2 million "fishing boat" in Florida. Name: The Bull. Lesson: no matter your continent, it helps to signal to investors you are one of those.

$320,000 dinky boat in Montauk. Name: Sitting Bull. (Because at that price, you probably don't want to be seen floating around in it. Better to let it Sit.)

Half share in a $12 million jet. Didn't help get Bernie the heck out of town. Name: Not The Bull.

$39,000 piano. Hey, sometimes, you need a place to place your fresh flowers. Tables get old.

$2.6 million in jewelry. It was only proper for Ruth to be well adorned at book signings for her $39.99 cookbook. Imagine if she showed up in the relatively affordable gold stuff sitting out there on the counter for all to touch at Macy's?

RUTH MADOFF'S NET WORTH: LAWYER UP & PEDDLE THOSE BOOKS

Ruth Madoff, cookbook author by profession, is lawyering up.
You would, too. She is one of a number of Madoff family members being looked at by investigators. Looked at in the "your assets may be at risk" sense of the phrase.
Ruth should also gear up for the largest book sale in the universe: sized like the Madoff Ponzi Scheme.
Reports indicate that on Friday, new court documents reveal that she and her prisoner-partner had a combined net worth of more than $823 million at the end of last year. EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE MILLION. It is not such a crazy over the top number when you consider that there is a $7 million yacht thrown in there and four properties  collectively worth about $22 million. Its not like there was just EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE MILLION in $1 bills sitting in her pocket. But still. She is properly worried.
Just how many cookbooks would Ruth have to sell to build her asset base back up if her wealth was distributed to Madoff victims? Amazon shows her cookbook is retailing for $36.99. And there are three authors, so profits are divied. Even assuming the publisher, editor and others get nothing from each book - a silly assumption - my rough math shows that if Ruth got 1/3 of the retail price of each book sold, she would need to sell more than 68 million books to regain her status quo.

Previously, a court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernie's firm reported that about $1 billion in assets had been recovered from the business.

BERNIE MADOFF'S PREPARED REMARKS TO COURT

Bernie's prepared statement in Court, below, had two purposes.

The first was to take full ownership of the fraud. He could not say the words I and my any more often without corrupting the English language, and indeed, tosses in a few extras even where they are not needed to make the sentence do its job.

The second was to make the point that other assets of his family should be left to them, and not wiped out to repay his victims: He believes their paychecks, and thus the stuff they own today, were funded by profits from what he suggests is the clean side of his business. His companies were two entirely separate operations, he contends, to protect his sons' homes and stuff.

Bernard Madoff's prepared statement, delivered Thursday in U.S. District Court in New York:

Your Honor, for many years up until my arrest on December 11, 2008, I operated a Ponzi scheme through the investment advisory side of my business, Bernard L. Madoff Securities LLC, which was located here in Manhattan, New York at 885 Third Avenue. I am actually grateful for this first opportunity to publicly speak about my crimes, for which I am so deeply sorry and ashamed. As I engaged in my fraud, I knew what I was doing was wrong, indeed criminal. When I began the Ponzi scheme I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme. However, this proved difficult, and ultimately impossible, and as the years went by I realized that my arrest and this day would inevitably come. I am painfully aware that I have deeply hurt many, many people, including the members of my family, my closest friends, business associates and the thousands of clients who gave me their money. I cannot adequately express how sorry I am for what I have done. I am here today to accept responsibility for my crimes by pleading guilty and, with this plea allocution, explain the means by which I carried out and concealed my fraud.

The essence of my scheme was that I represented to clients and prospective clients who wished to open investment advisory and individual trading accounts with me that I would invest their money in shares of common stock, options and other securities of large well-known corporations, and upon request, would return to them their profits and principal. Those representations were false because for many years up and until I was arrested on December 11, 2008, I never invested those funds in the securities, as I had promised. Instead, those funds were deposited in a bank account at Chase Manhattan Bank. When clients wished to receive the profits they believed they had earned with me or to redeem their principal, I used the money in the Chase Manhattan bank account that belonged to them or other clients to pay the requested funds. The victims of my scheme included individuals, charitable organizations, trusts, pension funds and hedge funds. Among other means, I obtained their funds through interstate wire transfers they sent from financial institutions located outside New York State to the bank account of my investment advisory business, located here in Manhattan, New York and through mailings delivered by the United States Postal Service and private interstate carriers to my firm here in Manhattan.

I want to emphasize today that while my investment advisory business -- the vehicle of my wrongdoing -- was part of my firm Bernard L. Madoff Securities, the other businesses my firm engaged in, proprietary trading and market making, were legitimate, profitable and successful in all respects. Those businesses were managed by my brother and two sons.

To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early 1990s. At that time, the country was in a recession and this posed a problem for investments in the securities markets. Nevertheless, I had received investment commitments from certain institutional clients and understood that those clients, like all professional investors, expected to see their investments out-perform the market. While I never promised a specific rate of return to any client, I felt compelled to satisfy my clients' expectations, at any cost. I therefore claimed that I employed an investment strategy I had developed, called a "split strike conversion strategy," to falsely give the appearance to clients that I had achieved the results I believed they expected.

Through the split-strike conversion strategy, I promised to clients and prospective clients that client funds would be invested in a basket of common stocks within the Standard & Poor's 100 Index, a collection of the 100 largest publicly traded companies in terms of their market capitalization. I promised that I would select a basket of stocks that would closely mimic the price movements of the Standard & Poor's 100 Index. I promised that I would opportunistically time these purchases and would be out of the market intermittently, investing client funds during these periods in United States Government-issued securities such as United States Treasury bills. In addition, I promised that as part of the split strike conversion strategy, I would hedge the investments I made in the basket of common stocks by using client funds to buy and sell option contracts related to those stocks, thereby limiting potential client losses caused by unpredictable changes in stock prices. In fact, I never made the investments I promised clients, who believed they were invested with me in the split strike conversion strategy.

To conceal my fraud, I misrepresented to clients, employees and others, that I purchased securities for clients in overseas markets. Indeed, when the United States Securities and Exchange Commission asked me to testify as part of an investigation they were conducting about my investment advisory business, I knowingly gave false testimony under oath to the staff of the SEC on May 19, 2006 that I executed trades of common stock on behalf of my investment advisory clients and that I purchased and sold the equities that were part of my investment strategy in European markets. In that session with the SEC, which took place here in Manhattan, New York, I also knowingly gave false testimony under oath that I had executed options contracts on behalf of my investment advisory clients and that my firm had custody of the assets managed on behalf of my investment advisory clients.

To further cover-up the fact that I had not executed trades on behalf of my investment advisory clients, I knowingly caused false trading confirmations and client account statements that reflected the bogus transactions and positions to be created and sent to clients purportedly involved in the split strike conversion strategy, as well as other individual clients I defrauded who believed they had invested in securities through me. The clients receiving trade confirmations and account statements had no way of knowing by reviewing these documents that I had never engaged in the transactions represented on the statements and confirmations. I knew those false confirmations and account statements would be and were sent to clients through the U.S. mails from my office here in Manhattan.

Another way that I concealed my fraud was through the filing of false and misleading certified audit reports and financial statements with the SEC. I knew that these audit reports and financial statements were false and that they would also be sent to clients. These reports, which were prepared here in the Southern District of New York, among things, falsely reflected my firm's liabilities as a result of my intentional failure to purchase securities on behalf of my advisory clients.

Similarly, when I recently caused my firm in 2006 to register as an investment advisor with the SEC, I subsequently filed with the SEC a document called a Form ADV Uniform Application for Investment Adviser Registration. On this form, I intentionally and falsely certified under penalty of perjury that Bernard L. Madoff Investment and Securities had custody of my advisory clients' securities. That was not true and I knew it when I completed and filed the form with the SEC, which I did from my office on the 17th floor of 855 Third Avenue, here in Manhattan.

In more recent years, I used yet another method to conceal my fraud. I wired money between the United States and the United Kingdom to make it appear as though there were actual securities transactions executed on behalf of my investment advisory clients. Specifically, I had money transferred from the U.S. bank account of my investment advisory business to the London bank account of Madoff Securities International Ltd., a United Kingdom corporation that was an affiliate of my business in New York. Madoff Securities International Ltd. was principally engaged in proprietary trading and was a legitimate, honestly run and operated business.

Nevertheless, to support my false claim that I purchased and sold securities for my investment advisory clients in European markets, I caused money from the bank account of my fraudulent advisory business, located here in Manhattan, to be wire transferred to the London bank account of Madoff Securities International Limited.

There were also times in recent years when I had money, which had originated in the New York Chase Manhattan bank account of my investment advisory business, transferred from the London bank account of Madoff Securities International Ltd. to the Bank of New York operating bank account of my firm's legitimate proprietary and market making business. That Bank of New York account was located in New York. I did this as a way of ensuring that the expenses associated with the operation of the fraudulent investment advisory business would not be paid from the operations of the legitimate proprietary trading and market making businesses.

In connection with the purported trades, I caused the fraudulent investment advisory side of my business to charge the investment advisory clients $0.04 per share as a commission. At times in the last few years, these commissions were transferred from Chase Manhattan bank account of the fraudulent investment advisory side of my firm to the account at the Bank of New York, which was the operating account for the legitimate side of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities -- the proprietary trading and market making side of my firm. I did this to ensure that the expenses associated with the operation of my fraudulent investment advisory business would not be paid from the operations of the legitimate proprietary trading and market making businesses. It is my belief that the salaries and bonuses of the personnel involved in the operation of the legitimate side of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities were funded by the operations of the firm's successful proprietary trading and market making businesses.

Your Honor, I hope I have conveyed with some particularity in my own words, the crimes I committed and the means by which I committed them. Thank you.

RUTH'S HUBBY'S NEW DIGS

For now anyway, Ruth is home comfy in the NY penthouse. By herself. But comfy. In the place she is taking a run at keeping. Provided she can establish the dough had nothin' to do with Madoff schemes. Good luck.
Bernie will never see the place his wife is hanging out again. The photo above is a cell in the NY facility Bernie calls home, for the time being anyway.