Madoff Decision Is Significant Setback for Owners of Mets

[welch]

Mets owners have to give up $300 million:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/sports/baseball/madoff-decision-is-significant-setback-for-owners-of-mets.html?_r=1&hp

Madoff Decision Is Significant Setback for Owners of Mets
By RICHARD SANDOMIR and KEN BELSON

From the moment they were sued last year for $1 billion by the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud, the owners of the Mets have fought every aspect of the enormous claim.

They rejected the trustee’s bid for what he called hundreds of millions in “fictitious profits,” dismissing his idea that they had been “net winners” over their decades of investing with Madoff.

They also derided the trustee’s bid to force them to pay back hundreds of millions more — the trustee claimed the owners had been willfully blind to evidence Madoff might have been a fraud — as a gross overreach that was backed by distorted or fabricated evidence.

On Tuesday, however, a federal appeals court in Manhattan appeared to settle a sizable chunk of the suit. Under its ruling, the team’s owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, could have to turn over at least $300 million to the trustee. It is a major financial setback for the owners who, faced with an unprofitable baseball operation, have already been forced to sell a portion of the team just to stop the bleeding of money.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel, said the trustee’s central formula for deciding how to recoup and redistribute the money that had moved through Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme was appropriate. The trustee, Irving H. Picard, had decided that investors who had taken more money out of their accounts with Madoff than they had put in had to return their “net winnings.”

It was that calculation that led Picard to make the $300 million claim against Wilpon and Katz. He had charged that scores of the accounts the men, their families and businesses had with Madoff had wound up “net winners” over the years.

[PANatsFan]

Hey spidertroll, THIS is what crooked owners look like.

[MarquisDeSade]

Hey spidertroll, THIS is what crooked owners look like.

Please define "crooked".

[spidernat]

Hey spidertroll, THIS is what crooked owners look like.

Fleecing a fanbase by being cheap and fielding an inferior product year after year while enriching yourself is crooked. So while the Mets' owner is crooked so are the Lerners.

[PANatsFan]

Please define "crooked".

They were stealing a crapload of money from other people.

[spidernat]

They were stealing a crapload of money from other people.

The Lerners have a different method.

[HalfSmokes]

So much for them extending Reyes

[houston-nat]

The Lerners have a legal method.

fixed

[Kevrock]

Mets agree to pay 162 million.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/19/news/companies/madoff-mets/index.htm?iid=HP_LN&hpt=hp_t1

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The owners of the New York Mets have agreed to pay a total of $162 million to the court-appointed trustee in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, according to the federal court handling the case.

Trustee Irving Picard, who is in charge of recovering assets stolen in Madoff's pyramid-style scheme, had sued the owners -- including Saul Katz, Fred Wilpon and the holding company Sterling Equities -- for $303 million.

That was in addition to the up to $83 million that Judge Jed Rakoff had earlier ruled that the Mets' owners were liable in the case.
The settlement was announced Monday just as jury selection was scheduled to begin at U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York in a trial on the trustee's claim. The settlement negates the need for a court case.

[HalfSmokes]

As a Nats fan, as long as the Wilpons get to keep the team, I'm happy

[welch]

Full story in the NY Times at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/sports/baseball/mets-owners-pay-162-million-to-settle-madoff-suit.html?hp

Look at the picture: the smiling faces of baseball?