“Last Friday I got a notice, in effect a letter,” Mort Zuckerman told CNBC’s Erin Burnett this afternoon, “saying, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but all of the money that you put with me was apparently invested with Bernie Madoff … he has gone bust and that money is all lost and I feel terribly.’” The letter was from Ascot Partners, a fund run by GMAC chairman J. Ezra Merkin. Did it say exactly those words? Probably not. Anyway, Mort’s point in being on the show was to say that he had no idea who Bernie Madoff was — “never heard of this guy Madoff. I never met him. I’ve never done business with him” — and that, furthermore, contrary to reports in the Journal, the $30 mil he lost was from his charitable trust. He was not, as the paper indicated, “significantly exposed” as a person. So, despite the fact that he was, “to put it mildly, not very happy,” just to clarify, he’s still rich, and in fact he has bigger problems: “I just found out about this on Friday,” he said. “I spent the weekend taking my daughter to see the Jonas Brothers, so I haven’t been thinking about this, and after that concert I’m trying to regain my hearing, which I’ve barely done.” And to make matters worse, that “S.O.S” song is just stuck inside his head.
Zuckerman says trust manager invested with Madoff-CNBC [CNBC]
