U.S. lists watches and jewelry it says Madoff sent relatives
Posted by agung | Filed under General, World News
New York,
Sixteen watches, including diamond-encrusted timepieces from Tiffany and Cartier. Four diamond brooches. Two sets of cuff links. An emerald ring.
These are a few of Bernard Madoff’s favorite things.
Or so U.S. prosecutors said in a court filing supporting their effort to revoke Madoff’s $10 million bail and send him to jail.
Madoff, who is said to have confessed last month to a huge investment fraud, is under 24-hour house arrest in his $7 million apartment in New York.
The filing was released Wednesday morning, less than 48 hours after a hastily called court hearing in which prosecutors said that Madoff and his wife, Ruth, had sent packages of valuables to his sons and brother, violating the terms of his bail agreement.
Madoff has promised the Securities and Exchange Commission that he will not dispose of any of his assets, which may eventually be sold and used to repay investors who lost money in the alleged scheme.
At the hearing Monday, a lawyer for Madoff, Ira Lee Sorkin, told Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis that many of the items were relatively inexpensive, including $25 cuff links and $200 mittens.
But the assistant U.S. attorneys, Marc Litt and Lisa Baroni, said in their filing that Sorkin’s description of the packages was at best incomplete.
“The defendant sent a package containing a total of approximately 13 watches, one diamond necklace, an emerald ring and two sets of cuff links,” the filing said. “The government has been informed that the value of those items could exceed $1 million. Two other packages - containing a diamond bracelet, a gold watch, a diamond Cartier watch, a diamond Tiffany watch, four diamond brooches, a jade necklace and other assorted jewelry - also were sent to relatives.”
The mittens were not mentioned.
By mailing the jewelry, Madoff disobeyed a court order and showed that he presented a “serious risk of flight,” the prosecutors wrote.
They asked Ellis to revoke Madoff’s bail and immediately send him to jail. A decision could come as early as Thursday afternoon.
Zachary Carter, the former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, said that prosecutors had a relatively good chance of persuading Ellis to revoke Madoff’s bail.
“The argument that I would make as a prosecutor would be that to the extent that Madoff ignored a legal obligation to preserve his assets, it is some indication that he would be willing to ignore other obligations, like remaining in the jurisdiction,” said Carter, who is now a partner in New York at the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney. “It could be regarded as a step in the direction of flight.”
In a response filed late Wednesday, Sorkin and Daniel Horwitz, who represent Madoff, argued that jailing him would be unfair and wrong. Madoff is already being watched round the clock, both for his protection and to prevent flight, and has an electronic monitoring device, his lawyers wrote. In addition, they said, at this point, Madoff is too widely known and too disliked to get very far if he tried to flee. Instead of jail, they said, Madoff would accept having his property inventoried and all his outgoing mail checked to make sure he did not try to transfer valuables again.
As for the jewelry that Madoff sent last month, Madoff’s lawyers characterized it as “a few sentimental personal items.” The decision by Bernard and Ruth Madoff to mail it, they said, was an honest mistake.
“Mr. Madoff gathered a number of watches that he had collected over the course of years, knowing that, due to the sudden change in his circumstances, he would never have an occasion to wear these watches again,” the lawyers wrote. “To Mr. and Mrs. Madoff, the value of these items was purely sentimental.”
Upon hearing of the mailing, some of Madoff’s investors and their lawyers had strong sentiments of their own.
“His acts were outrageous,” said Jerry Reisman, a lawyer on Long Island who represents 13 investor-claimants, with aggregate claims of $150 million. “He violated a court order; he tried to secrete his assets.”
Reisman said Madoff should be immediately confined to jail. “To use a great American expression in Webster’s dictionary - he has chutzpah,” Reisman said.
“He’s gotten away with it for so long that he thought he could continue to get away with it.”
Taken From,
http://www.iht.com
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Tags: Jewerly, Madoff, Relatives, U.S, Watches
