You know when you hear about a freak accident, like a dude getting hit by lightening or a piano falling from the sky, and you’re like, poor bastard, if only he had been a quarter inch to the left… ? That’s kind of how we felt reading about Martin Rosenman, of Bronx-based Stuyvesant Fuel Service Corp., who invested $10 million of the family business’s money with Bernie Madoff less than a week before Madoff confessed he’d been running a massive pyramid scheme.
Rosenman, who hadn’t previously invested with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, said he spoke by phone with Madoff Dec. 3 about investing the money, according to a complaint filed yesterday in bankruptcy court in Manhattan. “Madoff stated that the fund was closed until Jan. 1, 2009, but that Mr. Rosenman could wire money” before that date into a Madoff account, “where it would be held until the fund opened after the new year,” according to the complaint.
Oy. Rosenman, whose business was started in 1925 by his grandfather, according to his Website, which sports a folksy statement not unlike Madoff’s own, was probably all psyched he had found someone who shared his family values. And he did! Sort of! Howard Kleinhendler, a lawyer for Rosenman, reminds us that Madoff was planning on distributing between $200 million and $300 million to his friends, family, and loyal employees before confessing all: “This was part of the collection process to increase the amount to distribute.”
