Madoff’s (Alleged) Crimes Hit Charities Hard

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Altman & Altman’s Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog is unamused by the illegal shenanigans of investor Bernard Madoff:

Ironically, the Defendant’s [Madoff’s] gift of restraints and forced government housing was connected to charity and gift work throughout the nation. His actions have apparently brought about the destruction and near-destruction of various charities and philanthropies throughout the country. That’s right… that means fewer gifts for the under-privileged. It also means the same thing for victims of every financial level because they all have one thing in common now. They have been victims of white collar crime in a big way to the tune of approximately fifty billion dollars.

  

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They also find a Boston connection (apart from the Bostonians who have lost their investments to Madoff):

You may be unfamilier with the term “Ponzi scheme”. For those so uninitiated, it is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high profits to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business. It is named after Charles Ponzi who apparently introduced the scheme to the United States in the early 1900’s from…of all places…Boston.

The post details some of the charities hard hit by Madoff’s alleged crimes:

The Defendant’s clients include philanthropists Carl and Ruth Shapiro, major donors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Brandeis University, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The Shapiro family foundation lost almost half its money, or about $145 million, to the Defendant.

…the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, a private family organization that financed trips for Jewish youth to Israel for many years, as well as also supporting various Jewish educational and cultural services on the Boston’s North Shore, said it was forced to shut down and lay off employees after losing all of its estimated $8 million to the Defendant

Officials at the New York-based JEHT Foundation, a nonprofit focused on juvenile justice and fair elections, said it was freezing all its grants and would shut down at the end of January. The group gets all its funding from a couple, Jeanne and Kenneth Levy-Church, whose personal investments were managed by the Defendant.

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