Madoff items up for auction

Bernard Madoff: guilty

When Bernie Madoff was arrested in December last year, history's largest ever Ponzi scheme was uncovered, rocking the financial services industry. Now, with Madoff serving a 150-year prison sentence for fraud, a long list of his personal items have gone under the hammer in an effort to raise money for Madoff's victims.

The auction was initially predicted to raise just a fraction of the $21 billion Madoff stole, with early estimates suggesting around $500,000 would be raised. However, the auction actually went on to raise nearly twice as much as auctioneers had predicted.

Some of the items going under the hammer, including Madoff's New York Mets baseball jacket and his wife's diamonds earrings, fetched far more than their estimated value at the auction, held in a Manhattan ballroom on Saturday. In fact, the personalised Mets jacket actually sold for $14,000 - a full 20 times more than its estimated value.

Proceeds

The money raised from the auction will go the fraudster's many victims, which include a number of charities and Hollywood megastars such as Kevin Bacon and Steven Spielberg.

Other items up for auction included Madoff's letter-headed personal stationery, both Swatch and Rolex watches, furs and fishing tackle, dog bowls, vases, Hermes handbags and clothes.

Appointed by the US Marshal department, auctioneers Gaston and Sheehan handled the sale, part of the long process of trying to recover some of the money lost over the almost 20 years of Madoff running his fraudulent Ponzi scheme.

According to reports, US authorities have only identified over 10 percent of the the money estimated to have passed through his investment business.

Related Articles:

Over the hedge? | Executive greed back to the fore

Like this article? Get the RSS feed: