John “Launny” Steffens, a prominent former Merrill Lynch executive turned hedge-fund manager, lost $35 million of his and other Merrill executives’ money to Bernie Madoff through a fund he ran with J. Ezra Merkin. “I’m really upset we lost this money,” he told the Journal. But look, at least this time, it wasn’t because he was stupid. “There were literally very smart people in various and sundry areas that did all kinds of due diligence and didn’t find it either.” [WSJ]
