Madoff musta been giving tax evasion seminars. Read on.
February 22, 2006
Scam artist laundered millions through fictitious companies; claimed to head a US-based tax-exempt charity raising money for a school in Israel.
Israeli emigre to the US, Abie Moskowitz, ran his tax fraud scheme like a well-oiled corporation. Moskowitz enlisted friends and relatives who owned businesses and persuaded them to write his checks under the guise of deductible expenses. He then laundered the money through bank accounts of fictitious companies he created, retrieved the cash, repaid his financiers and kept his cut. In just three years, Moskowitz and his cohorts were able to divert and conceal more than $8.6 million, some of which he squirreled away in accounts in Israel.
Moskowitz admitted as much when he pleaded guilty to fraud, tax and money-laundering charges before a US District Judge. The 56-year-old Brooklyn man was the last, and most significant, of the 12 defendants to plead guilty in a long-running fraud network that prosecutors suspect might have stolen millions more.
The case dated back nearly five years. A bank employee noticed irregular activity in some accounts and notified the FBI. Agents from the IRS and US Postal Service later joined the probe to help unravel an intricate web of shell companies and fraudulent tax returns.
Moskowitz emigrated from Israel to the US in 1965. He laimed to be part owner of Sea Jet Trucking/APA Warehouse Inc, a commercial shipping and storage company, until he sold his share around 2000, authorities said. He also owned a piece of American Poly Inc, a Brooklyn-based commercial packaging company. And he claimed to be president of Mosdot Nardvorna Mamar Mordechai, a US-based tax-exempt Jewish charity raising money for a school in Israel.
But it was shell businesses with names like Jersey York Baking and Madison Financial and Gateway, that made him rich, authorities said. Moskowitz admitted laundering money through the fictitious companies' bank accounts and mailing more than $378,000 to an unidentified contact in Israel. He acknowledged that he failed to report $1.9 million in personal income for the tax years 1998, 1999 and 2000 and owed more than $600,000 in income tax.
In the past two years, 11 other defendants have pleaded guilty to lesser charges in the Moskowitz scheme. Among them was Moskowitz's son, Sholom Moskowitz. Most were members of the close-knit Brooklyn Jewish community where Moskowitz lives and is well known, the prosecutor said.
Madoff, 71, was transferred from the medium security prison facility to Butner’s medical facility on Dec. 18, Catherine Elsea, a spokeswoman for the medical center said in a statement. Elsea declined to say why Madoff was transferred. Citing a person briefed on the matter, the New York Times reported yesterday that Madoff was under observation for dizziness and high blood pressure. “It could be one of a few things,” said Herbert J. Hoelter, a prison consultant who advised Madoff. “They do surgical procedures if there’s a need for that.” Hoelter, a cofounder and chief executive officer of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives in Baltimore, said the medical center at Butner is a full-service hospital, which is equipped to provide emergency services, surgery, psychiatric care and cancer treatments. ..... Bernard Madoff, the con man who operated the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, has been moved to the Federal Medical Center at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina.
Madoff, Wall Street’s Toll on Hungry Starts at 100,000 Meals - BL, 2009 December 24, by Patrick Cole
Five days later, the foundation sent an e-mail saying the check wasn’t coming because its investments had been wiped out in the $65 billion Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Bernard Madoff, one of its money managers. That check represented more than 15,500 meals. Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence for masterminding the scheme. Citymeals, which delivers meals to the elderly, also lost donors employed at Bear Stearns & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., both of which went bankrupt. Last year, Citymeals had a $4 million deficit, and sagging donations have kept its budget flat this year at $18 million while demand for its meals has increased. Last December, Marcia Stein, the executive director of Citymeals-on-Wheels, got a call from Barbara Picower saying her Picower Foundation would be giving the New York food charity $100,000.