Report: Madoff's Brother Sells Park Avenue Home Ahead Of Prison Term
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- One month before beginning his 10-year presence sentence, Peter Madoff – the brother of convicted Ponzi scheme operator Bernie Madoff – has sold his posh Park Avenue home, according to a published report.
Peter Madoff, 67, sold his two-bedroom residence at 975 Park Ave. for $4.6 million, according to the New York Daily News. The proceeds on the sale will go to the U.S. Marshals Service for restitution for those taken in by Madoff's brother's scheme, the newspaper reported.
An attorney from Chicago is buying the residence, which features a servant's quarters, a wine cooler, a stainless steel gourmet kitchen, an entry gallery with a fine art collection, and a 29- by 15-foot dining room, the newspaper reported.
Peter Madoff bought the residence for $4.1 million in 2004, and will now move to a one-bedroom residence in Battery Park City with his wife, the newspaper reported. She will live there while he serves his prison sentence.
Madoff pleaded guilty last June to charges that he doctored documents that helped conceal a fraud that wiped out thousands of investors. He was sentenced last month.
"Peter Madoff enabled the largest fraud in human history," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement last June. "He will now be jailed well into old age and he will forfeit virtually every penny he has. We are not yet finished calling to account everyone responsible for the epic fraud of Bernard Madoff and the epic pain of his many victims."
Madoff told the judge he was "deeply ashamed and terribly sorry'' but that he didn't know about the scam until his brother revealed it in December 2008. When he learned of the fraud he said, "I was in shock and my world was destroyed. I lost everything I worked for.''
In 2009, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for swindling billions of dollars from thousands of investors.
Bernie Madoff's son, Mark, committed suicide two years after the scandal broke. His surviving son, Andrew, remains under investigation, investigative sources told CBS 2's John Slattery. So does Peter Madoff's daughter, Shana, who, like her father, was a compliance officer for the firm.
Close to $20 billion vanished in the scam, the largest Ponzi scheme ever prosecuted in the U.S. The scheme left behind only a few hundred million dollars, not the $65 billion claimed in bogus financial statements.
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