Fleeting Fortune: Courts asked to cancel Madoff's car leases
There are many jobs in the world which we wouldn't want. Ranking high among them is Irving Picard's. He's the guy stuck with managing the liquidation of Bernie Madoff's firm. Having purportedly defrauded his clients (including numerous charitable foundations) of over $50 billion, Madoff has undoubtedly left quite a mess to untangle, and we're glad someone else is taking care of it while we write about cars for a living. But amidst that assuredly insurmountable mess is a fleet of luxury automobiles that Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities had leased for use by the firm.
Included in the Madoff garage are a Land Rover Range Rover, a Cadillac DTS, a pair of Mercedes S550s and a GL450, along with an unspecified Lexus. Several of the vehicles have already been returned to their dealerships, but Picard is petitioning the Federal Bankruptcy Court to rubber-stamp the cancellation of the leases in order to mitigate the cost of administrating the case. Considering that Picard has already delivered letters of termination to the firm's sixty employees and that Madoff himself is under house arrest in his Manhattan penthouse apartment, it's not like anyone's going to be using them, anyway. Unfortunately, since the cars are leased, there's no capital to recuperate for the reimbursement of Madoff's defrauded clients who are, themselves, still waiting to find out how much they've each lost.
[Source: The New York Times via The Car Connection]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Hike15 7:22AM (1/27/2009)
he isnt much of a car enthusiast from the look of his garage...
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TyWright 7:24AM (1/27/2009)
I still don't get why the courts are being so pansy with him. He should be sent to Guantanamo.
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Jsams4131 8:01AM (1/27/2009)
yeah definately no taste in that garage:
if there were good reasons to re enact public linching...this guy would be numero uno in my book. but seriously they need to put him in a medieval punishment stock in the center of wall street and embarass the s**t out of him, then send him to jail.
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RMc 8:30AM (1/27/2009)
He should be in jail and his assets liquidated. It's total BS that a crook with this level of greed is even allowed to remain free. How about they just hook one arm to Land Rover and the other to the GL, put them both in 4Lo and play tug-of-war?
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jim 9:22AM (1/27/2009)
Irving's job? Given the liquidation specialists make a nice nickle, work in a nice warm environment and everyone's anger is directed at the perp or ex bosses, its not a bad gig. If at about 20 I recognized the opportunity...
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Rich 9:31AM (1/27/2009)
Why did this take so long? How much money is this Picard guy raking in by dragging things out so long? How much is being displaced into the "fake money" pile because this guy wants to be paid "real money"?
I suppose it's said "set a thief to catch a thief" -- it's just that the latter of the two is legal in this case.
(You know, you don't need to say "Land Rover Range Rover". You can just say "Range Rover" -- we'll know what you mean. Partly because nobody else makes Range Rovers, and partly because it's what they're called.)
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Phil 11:46AM (1/27/2009)
Throw him in jail and throw away the key TODAY !!!
Oh I forgot jail is for ther poor.
People get thrown in jail for much less, maybe we should all have the choice of house arrest.
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vkchu 12:44PM (1/27/2009)
i remember reading that the lexus was an 06 my. taking a look at the other cars, it is probably an ls.
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Max 5:50PM (1/27/2009)
"Madoff himself is under house arrest in his Manhattan penthouse apartment".
Poor poor Madoff, he has to stay in his 5 star luxury penthouse paid with money stolen from others. What the hell is wrong with this picture guys???
Put a bullet through his head, throw him in a cold dungeon, Alcatraz or Guantanamo!!!
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