Irving Picard, the trustee in charge of the Madoff estate, doesn’t believe that the relatives of Bernie Madoff who worked at the firm — his brother Peter, his sons Mark and Andrew, and his niece Shana — knew anything about his Ponzi scheme. But only because he thinks they were too stupid. Not only did they use the business as a “family piggy bank” to finance their flashy lifestyles, the trustee alleges in his $199 million lawsuit against the family, as employees, they were “completely derelict” in carrying out their professional duties. “Simply put, if the family members had been doing their jobs … the Madoff Ponzi scheme might never have succeeded, or continued for so long,” he wrote. Ouch. At this point, if we were them, we’d say we knew it was all a scam just to look smarter.
4 Madoff Relatives Sued; Trustee Seeks $199 Million [DealBook/NYT]
