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December 12, 2008 | 10:29 am
Madoff’s injurious ties to Yeshiva University and the Jewish community
Posted by Dean Rotbart
The victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s massive Wall Street swindle – perhaps as much as $50 billion, will include many Jewish non-profits that have been large beneficiaries of Madoff’s contributions.
The epicenter of pain may well be Yeshiva University, where Madoff sat on the Board of Trustees and was chairman of the Sy Syms School of Business. (YU says he has resigned all postiions with the college.)
I contacted YU this morning to discuss the matter and received back this terse statement from Hedy Shulman, director of media relations:
“We are shocked at this revelation. Our lawyers and accounts [sic] are investigating all aspects of his relationship to the university. We reserve our comments until we complete our investigation.”
Madoff has also been a large supporter of Gift of Life, which matches bone marrow donors and has saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. Madoff and his wife Ruth, were honored for their support not long ago at a Gala dinner at the Grand Hyatt in New York attended by more than 700 guests. Master of Ceremonies was Tony Award winning actor, Ron Rifkin.
If government allegations against Madoff are accurate, he may well turn out to be the biggest fraud in the history of Wall Street, which has had its share of big schemers. Those looking to blame America’s economic crisis on the Jews – and yes there are some – will now have a poster boy for their crusade.
At the moment, there are so many important, unanswered questions. Among them: Did Madoff, who is also a major Democratic fundraiser, use ill-gotten gains to fuel his charitable giving? Hard to image that he did not.
Will any of his victims be able to recover donated funds? Sadly, it seems unlikely that most of those who trusted Madoff with their retirement savings and family estates will ever be made whole. The hard question is should YU and other charities ‘refund’ Madoff’s donations?
How many of Madoff’s clients are Jewish is unclear, perhaps never to be known. No doubt, however, many of his clients were also members of the tribe.
An early read of the financial press also suggests that some non-profits, including YU, may have invested part of their endowments directly or indirectly with Madoff’s firm.
The Jewish world has only just begun to sense the enormity of Madoff’s mischief. The worst is still to come.
p.s. Yeshiva University has already made a mess of its handling of this public relations crisis. I will be writing about it in The Memo next week. Take a look at this blogger who has documented YU’s effort to sandblast Madoff off its websites.
Shabbat Shalom!
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Madoff is protecting is family who are potentially criminals too. Our “tribe” has been betrade and one of our tribal chiefs is a fraud. Time for the tribe to bring out the stones.
Who is surprised? Jews are and have always disproportionately been white-collar criminals.
Well the Jewish Journal of L.A. wants us to believe Madoff never had a religion, was raised by wolves, and his Jewish connection is pure coincidence. Sorry, not buyin’ it. Oh when he gave all that money he was Super-Jew, now he’s from Mars. How ‘bout FINALLY taking some responsibility and seeing how, what, where, why and what is wrong that your/our culture/religion which produced, nurtured, and applauded this man. Looks like a simple answer so far: MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. But shhh, don’t let the goyim know. Guess what, THEY KNOW! How ‘bout you folks gettin’ a clue and teaching and demanding some morals and decency, and stop looking at wealth and greed as the only measure of success.
Also don’t worry about the non-Jews, many of them are just as bad and they’ll always blame the Jews. Problem is this time the culprit is a Jew. How do our leaders not see him for who is really is/was? Answer: MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. I don’t expect any real change until a lot more of these crooks are exposed. So be it.
Jews do not steal like this. Clearly Madoff was a Muslim or Arab. Only Muslims and Arabs commit crimes.
So you got 100mil lets say and you want to invest with Madeoff with your Money, aka Bernie the Bastard. But your not happy with a pedestrian return of a Cd or bond. 4% on 100mil is 4mil. You only can get conned if your greedy? So I ask? Is it worth the extra 6.5% return that shithead was supposedly making for you? Sorry for the rhetoric. 4mil wasn’t enough of a return? Now look at you, you are *** on balls broke. That 4mil return is looking good now huh? There is a bridge in Brooklyn for sale anyone interested ?
It’s true, Only Muslims and Arabs commit crimes. I read it on the Internet.
Madoff swam in Jewish circles. As a result, he raised most of his investments from Jewish investors/Jewish organizations. Norman Braman, Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, Yeshiva University Endowment Fund, J. Ezra Merkin, Stephen J. Helfman—all Jews/Jewish organizations.
Yeshiva University and other organizations that accepted money from Madoff should get a lawyer fast. Investors swindled by Madoff will sue to reclaim any money that is still out there and any organization that accepted the tainted money. The money was not Madoff’s to give away and should be returned to the rightful owner.
Madoff also stole from Yeshiva U, in the thousands of millions.
I cry for the elderly retires that gave their life savings to this animal and now have to sell their homes for food.
I feel for the innocent people who lost money and we need to call for tougher oversight of financial companies immediately. Where is Schumer and Dodd and why are they not calling for an investigation of other investment firms just waiting to fail? If you have money invested I would do your homework and if not satisfied pull out your funds and get a CD.
You think he was a Muslim/Arab? How are you any better than the people who generalize Madoff’s behavior to reflect that of all Jews? You are practicing the same poisonous generalization/hatred that Jews were forced to suffer from not too long ago. You should be ashamed of yourself for hating millions of people without knowing them. YOU are the problem—-sitting behind your computer and spitting out poison.
rabbai H. Lokstein from Kehilth Yeshurun lost money in madoff scandale.
Dear Dean,
Is there not some irony here in the Memo. On the one hand we have a successful and charitable Jew, who is criticized by you because he does not donate to your favorite charities. On the other hand we have what appears to be a successful and charitable Jew who does donote to some of your favorite charities and he turns out to be a swindler. Oy, “Man proposes and God disposes”!
Gilbert H. Skopp
Dear Gilbert,
On this point, you and I agree. Given the choice between a Jewish philanthropist who steals his funds and then donates them, and a Jewish philanthropist who does way too little in terms of Jewish philanthropy, I’ll vote for Eli Broad. There are others, however, who neither steal nor shy away from their Jewishness. It is they I commend. By the way, and I ask in all honesty, do you not think Eli Broad should be more generous with Jewish charities? If we are not for ourselves, who will be?
Dean Rotbart
The Memo
As long as the only charity and morality that counts is that which benefits (fellow) Jews, things like this will keep on happening.
You can’t just switch back and forth.
“If we are not for ourselves” becomes “If I am not for myself” without warning.
Dear Dean,
You ask a question that I can not answer intelligently with a simple “Yes” or “No”, so it must be a good question. Your justification for criticizing another Jew’s philanthropy is because of your strong feelings for the welfare of your fellow Jews (or at least 22% of them) and Israel. That’s not wrong for you.
Mr. Broad is a staunch advocate and supporter of the Arts. I happen to be a Jew who enjoys Art Museums. In that sense, Mr Broad’s contributions do benefit Jews as well. At the same time, I know that a large amount of financial support to our Jewish Skirball Museum have come from non-Jews.
I personally would like to see the end of Hunger on this planet. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, non-Jews, are working towards that end and I admire them for that. Yet we know that there is always other causes that are needy and worth while and cry out to be supported. I am solicited (as you probably are too) by many worth while charities and I can not donate to them all. So, I choose. So, Mr Broad chooses. It’s his money, he earned it, didn’t steal it, can spend it or give it away any way he chooses.
If I were you, I’d ask him nicely for a donation to a charity that interests you and explain why he would be doing a mizvah.
Gilbert
The problem with all of you idiots who posted the first few comments is that you contribute to turning this into a Jew/non Jew problem. You join the masses of uneducated fools who make bold assessments about situations that you probably don’t know much about. Yes Mr. Madoff was Jewish. Yes, he stole from mainly innocent Jewish individuals and organizations. However, Jewish people don’t go around claiming Timothy McVeigh was a Roman Catholic so we should brand all Roman Catholics as murderers. Or if I do play into your stupidity, then what about this lovely Allen Stanford? This new $8 billion Texas swindler is probably either Protestant or Christian… maybe the Jews can pass the buck along to the likes of you morons.
Interesting comments you have here, they are really so into it. I really enjoyed reading this.
Great comments.Couldn’t have put it any better.
People really seem to take these things seriously and their passion shows. Great article as I enjoyed the read.
People talk about how many people lost money to Madoff. You hear stories about how people lost millions. This is only part of the story.
Think of this, Madoff investments net about 18% annually so lets look look at one investor that supposed lost $110M. We will look at Yeshiva University.
THe unversity invested the money in the early 1990s so lets say 1993 is the year of full investment and we do not look at compounding by assuming that they took their “returns” out when they got them. Yeshiva U made 15 years of “profits”.
At 18% each year the university got $19.8M.
After 15 years Yeshiva got $297M.
If Yeshiva lost the original $110M then they still made a profit of $187M.
As with any pyramid scheme the people at the top of the pyramid make a killing.
The people at the bottom lose a lot - just like that French Royal that was so ashamed that he committed suicide.
Now think about some Madoff Friend that invested $1M in 1975.
This person would have made $5.94M then subtract loss of $1M and they still have $4.94
Please note that my calculations are very basic not taking into consideration the NPV of money.
Then think of the money that the accountants made along with the Madoff friends that channeled “investors” to Madoff - some guys were making $10 to $15M annually!
Moral of the story = if you see a good pyramid get in early!
Your assessment isn’t accurate because the gains were never there to begin with. You’re calculating the “returns” into an investor’s net holdings. You cannot calculate what was never there. If I’m not mistaken, the amounts that were claimed as losses were the value of the initial investment plus add-ons over the course of their limited partnership with Madoff. So if you invested $5mm with him, your loss is $5mm because you’re excluding all falsified gains.
And pyramid schemes have nothing to do with hedge fund investing.
“The victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s massive Wall Street swindle – perhaps as much as $50 billion, will include many Jewish non-profits that have been large beneficiaries of Madoff’s contributions.”baby travel strollers
They’re beneficiaries in terms of receiving sizable charitable donations in return for their investment into his fund. That is where the word “contributions” comes into play. In the hedge fund industry, if someone invests many millions of dollars into your fund and they have a charitable organization that they’re very much involved in, you donate. The manager profits from the marketability of increased assets under management (AUM), management fees, and performance fees. The investor that backs or founded a charitable organization benefits through profits on their capital in addition to large donations made to their charity of choice.
The victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s massive Wall Street swindle – perhaps as much as $50 billion, will include many Jewish non-profits that have been large beneficiaries of Madoff’s contributions
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Amazing article! Keep it writing more interesting posts.
Jews do not steal like this. Clearly Madoff was a Muslim or Arab. Only Muslims and Arabs commit crimes.
Comment by Tkv on 12/12/08 at 10:19 pm
Response: I think the things are very clear. You stole and still blaming on others.
Great to see that this swindler will spend the rest of his life in jail. Too bad that does nothing to fix the thousands of lives he ruined.
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keep up the great work on your articles.
Warmest Regards
Jenny J
Hi thanks for this story. But somethings in life are terrible.
As i said before there are somethings in life that are terrible. I hope this gets sorted out as quickly as possible.
Jeff
I appreciate you taking the time to right this article. Do you write for other article sites or blogs ?
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There has certainly been some major developments in how the world interacts. I see the differnet readers have a wide variety of views. Thanks for sharing