He was an "accountant and a lawyer". Here is his Florida estate. Would you do what he and his wife have done to live there? But how many would ...?
Posted on 12/18/2010 7:04:38 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
These folks played in a whole nuther league... Sad, sad thing.
Yep, a whole lot of chlorine being sprinkled over this "settlement".
Maybe the merry widow doesn't want to be found at the bottom of the pool either.
Or maybe unidentified off-shore bank accounts eased her pain considerably since the gigantic settlement left her ostensibly with only a couple billions or so on which to survive.
Leni
Palm Beach - The collapse of an alleged investment scheme run by Bernard Madoff has wiped out the Picower Foundation, which was based in Palm Beach and distributed almost $270 million over two decades, including significant gifts to dozens of local programs. Barbara Picower, who started the foundation with her husband, investor Jeffry Picower, in 1989, sent an e-mail Friday to charities she supported, telling them she had no more money to make grants. The foundation will close within months.
The Picower Foundation is the largest so far to announce it was ruined by an alleged Ponzi scheme that might total $50 billion in losses. It was the second-largest foundation in Florida, with assets previously listed at $1 billion.
Almost all of its assets were managed by Madoff, whose "act of fraud has had a devastating impact on tens of thousands of lives as well as numerous philanthropic foundations and nonprofit organizations," Picower wrote in her statement.
Since 1989, Barbara Picower had supported a host of charities in the Northeast and South Florida. She gave to the Palm Beach County School District, the South Florida Science Museum and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County. At the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, the foundation built the Picower Foundation Arts Education Center, with studios, art laboratories, classrooms and 4,500 square feet of rehearsal space.
Tana Ebbole, chief executive of the Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County, had four projects paid for in part by Picower. Those projects included a program that sends nurses to the homes of local mothers and an organization that helps improve the quality of after-school programs.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-flpalmadoff1221pndec21,0,4725782.story
The landscape is littered with these "foundations and charities." Brooklyn, NY residents registered some 800 rax-exempts in Lakewood-----a small flea-bitten central New Jersey town.
The IRS has asserted that tax-exempt "foundations and charities" are the locus classicus for tax evasion and IRS fraud.
Investigators may be looking at the legal parameters of prosecutable crimes including making false statements to state and federal officials, filing falsified documents, obstruction of proceedings before state and federal agencies, fiduciary negligence, and obstruction of US justice.
The N/P's might have facilitated IRS fraud by integrating:
1. Secret control over N/P fund-raising committees.
2. Requiring only one signature on tax-exempt N/P bank checks.
3. Utilizing pre-signed tax-exempt bank checks.
4. Using secret bank accounts to keep secret the actual financial position of tax-exempt N/P's.
5. Assigning bank deposit and account reconciliation functions of tax-exempts to one person.
6. Conspiring to hide oversight of expenses and supporting vouchers from public view.
7. Having no outside auditor to review tax-exempt N/P's statements.
8. Cashing unusually large amounts of tax-exempt checks.
9. Having no official tax-exemp deposit and withdrawal control system.
Authorities should investigate the Madoff-invested tax-exempts's US Postal Service mailings, wire transfers, computer transfers, electronic submissions, and unregulated money transfers, and all bank transfers connected to secret tax-exempt non-profits’ bank accounts.
Fraudulent tax-exempt non-profit activities might have involved using checks passed from one account to another in multiple conspiracies to launder monies.
The stratagem could have been international in its scope due Madoff's worldwide connections.
Authorities need to determine the extent to which donors to Madoff-invested N/P's colluded in schemes that may have included misusing reserve bank accounts, concealing transfers, inflating asset values and improperly accounting for transactions.
A formal inquiry should be conducted into the Madoff-invested tax-exempts and their financial activities with officers of publicly-held companies) including (1) Enron-style accounting frauds by manipulating N/P records, (2) bundling contributions into the pockets of politicians, (3) the extent to which networks of companies are financing political candidates in the names of business partners without their knowledge or consent, (4) the extent to which officers of publicly-held companies used accounting fraud to hide illegal campaign contributions, and, (5) the extent to which campaign donations exceeded campaign-finance limits.
Charges might include Madoff-invested tax-exempt charities' accounting managers misappropriating funds to cover personal expenses, fraudulently overcharging for management services, diverting non-profit funds, then converting them to campaign accounts, or in the style of WorldCom greed spending thousands of non-profit dollars on organization credit cards for personal expenses.
A formal inquiry should be undertaken with respect to the Madoff-invested N/P's relatives, associates, co-conspirators or subsets of them, and donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies), the business dealings between recipients, employees and elected and appointed officials and the extent to which influence-peddling is taking place, and more specifically the extent to which relatives, associates, and principles of the Madoff-invested foundations and charities and their co-conspirators or subsets of them, directed political activities from tax-free non-profit organizations in illegal arrangements.
The BIGGEST FRAUDS are between foundation and foundation .....writing checks to each other (which is the MO for laundering tax-exempt monies).
Authorities need to determine the extent to which the Madoff-invested charities manipulated philanthropic transactions, such as:
(1) loans, the (2) sale, (3) exchange or (4) leasing of property to related organizations, and donors, and the extent to which organizations reported (5) "excess benefit transactions" on Form 990, and, (6) the extent to which executive pay properly accounted for with the IRS.
The Madoff-invested charities need to reveal the dimension of contributions these organizations that may have been illegally redirected to political activity and be requested to explain:
(1) how the Madoff-invested charities solicit non-profit contributions,
(2) how non-profit donations are made, and,
(3) the manner in which donors to the Madoff-invested N/P's (particularly officers of publicly-held companies allocated company assets).
The Madoff-invested N/P's should be asked for details about who inside, and outside, these organizations is soliciting contributions, how the various subcommittees are funded, and the extent to which the Madoff-invested N/P's their donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies) are colluding to perhaps finance political campaigns surreptitiously, and are engaging in other illegal transactions.
The Picower Foundation, The Chais Family Foundation, Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, Steven Spielberg's tax-exempt Wunderkind Foundation, tax-exempt Yeshiva University, the Kehilath Jeshurun synagogue, the Maimonides, Ramaz and SAR day schools---and more---all invested with Madoff.
The landscape is littered with these "foundations and charities." Brooklyn, NY residents registered some 800 tax-exempts in Lakewood-----a small flea-bitten central New Jersey town.
The IRS has asserted that tax-exempt "foundations and charities" are the locus classicus for tax evasion and IRS fraud.
Investigators may be looking at the legal parameters of prosecutable crimes including making false statements to state and federal officials, filing falsified documents, obstruction of proceedings before state and federal agencies, fiduciary negligence, and obstruction of US justice.
At the time Barbara had just had her hair and nails done. So diving in to save him was out of the question.
The buzz is she tried to save him----she threw in wads of $1000 bills with gold money clips, and the keys to her Rolls.....to no avail.
Almost all of its assets were managed by Madoff, whose “act of fraud has had a devastating impact on tens of thousands of lives as well as numerous philanthropic foundations and nonprofit organizations,” Picower wrote in her statement.
So the foundation had $1 billion in assets, but she gave back $6 billion. Interesting that her private stash was so much larger...:^)
No question in my mind——L/E told her if she didn’t cough up the money, she was going to jail......despite her high-sounding statement to the contrary.
Wiki sez:
Business dealings
Picower was a certified public accountant and lawyer.[6] However, he appears to have made most of his sizable fortune by investing.[6] According to the Jewish newspaper The Forward, Picower was a donor to many Jewish charities during his career, giving away over 2 million dollars during 2007 alone.[7]
As an accountant at Laventhol & Horwath in the 1980s, Picower set up questionable tax shelters.[8] When the IRS challenged their validity, one of Picower’s clients sued him and the firm.[8] The case was quietly settled out of court.[8]
In 1983, Picower was rebuked by the Securities and Exchange Commission for late disclosure of his greater than 5% position in a company involved in a merger.[8]
In 1991, Picower and Anthony Cerami established a charity, the Picower Institute for Medical Research,[8] at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, with an initial endowment of $10 million.[9] Researchers led by Kevin J. Tracey made a potentially valuable discovery, with possible applications in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.[10][11]
It was spun off into a for-profit company, Cytokine Networks, which was later merged with privately-held PharmaSciences to form Cytokine PharmaSciences.
However, it was revealed that Picower owned 76% of PharmaSciences stock and actually controlled 86.2%, putting him in a conflict of interest in the merger negotiations.[8]
After Physician Computer Network, Inc., went bankrupt, Picower, the chairman of the board and 45% shareholder, had to give $21 million to other shareholders in 2000[8] after it was discovered that company executives had falsified financial statements.[12]
Alaris Medical Systems, 65% owned by Picower, was taken over by Cardinal Health in 2004 for $1.6 billion.[13]
Picower has been listed by Forbes magazine as one of the top 400 richest people in the United States for 2009, his only time on the list. Forbes, which listed Picower at No. 371, placed his net worth at $1 billion,
although the magazine acknowledged that the former lawyer and accountant is “likely worth billions more.”
Now that the G got mrs Picower to cough up all the ill-gotten gains of her late hubby they have to go after anyone and everyone who withdrew or cashed in One Penny of 'profit' from Bernie's scam.
an aside: And while they're looking at "foundations and charities" used to evade taxes I suggest they look into the one that's being run out of a house on the north side of Chicago that's being rented out. After all, how can you run a Tax Free 'Foundation' from a HQ that's in a house that has some renter living there?
And now that Rahm and his wife are in Chicago *full time*, I'm sure that Patrick Fitzgerald can squeeze them into his busy schedule for a little chat.
(1) I had to look up what 'locus classicus' meant :-)
Holder is trying to see if he can prosecute Jews without causing too much fuss. Maybe they deserve it for pushing “tax exempts” to the limit. I don’t know.
And while they’re looking at “foundations and charities” used to evade taxes I suggest they look into the one that’s being run out of a house on the north side of Chicago that’s being rented out. After all, how can you run a Tax Free ‘Foundation’ from a HQ that’s in a house that has some renter living there?
he lived free in DC.
And all his money goes to his own charity -—that pays only for his and his synagogue’s expenses ...
This is not a transparent tax deception?
By the future ‘’mayor” ???
Never a peep by the media ?
BTW, All, don’t forget that Eric Holder is that scum Marc Rich’s lawyer -— another tax cheat that got away;
Hell
He even got pardoned.
Without ever going to trial ...
Good ol’ Bill Clinton took care of that.
RIght after he and Swartz at LORAL made a few million bucks telling the Chinese how to better target American cities with their nuclear missiles.
And everyone here wonders why America is in the trouble we are in ...
Yeah, that's a shame.
Holder is trying to see if he can prosecute Jews?
One Jew? Some Jews? All Jews? Whaddya mean?
Prosecute some Jews in the US as a means to kick at Israel. Just a chicken manure sort of move.
Do they deserve it for stretching the rules on “tax exempts”? I don’t know if they deserve being investigated/ charged/ prosecuted/, I’ll leave that up to the folks on the juries.
The Rich are different from you and me...” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“I’ve never been a millionaire, but I know I’d be just darling at it!” ~ Diana in Wisconsin & Dorothy Parker
Thanks..I’ll try to find the story which stated that they still had about $ 3 billion in assets left. BTW..check out today’s Daily Beast..good story about Bernie’s “ short, fat” secretary, and her day of reckoning today...
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