Madoff with the Money (38 page)

Robbins had named his friend Glantz to the board of directors of EarthSave after Robbins' book,
Diet for a New America
, “had made an impact on me, and many people of my generation,” says Glantz. “John and I became friends. I loved John and cared for him, and somewhere down the line I said, ‘If you want, you can try out what I'm doing,'” which was putting money in Madoff. “I told him what I thought the return would be—10 to 13 percent. I considered I was very fortunate [to be investing in Madoff], so I brought John in. I brought friends in.”

Asked how many investors he had enlisted, Glantz declined to answer.

“All I can say is I brought in friends and family, and one of them was John Robbins.”

In all the years Glantz was investing and feeding friends to Bernie, he claims he never once met the big man himself:

He says through the years he took money out. “I lived off it. I never touched the principle.”

When reminded that Bernie had admitted that he hadn't made a trade in some 13 years and just kept investors' money in a bank account, Glantz responded, “Apparently. It's mind-blowing, isn't it? Half the world went upside down. I have a 91-year-old mother, and all her money was in with Madoff. All
my
money was with Madoff. But Bernie had credentials. He had a three-floor brokerage in New York and an office in London. I had a client who called up Bernie himself and told him he wanted to put in $100 million and Bernie told him no, he wasn't taking it. I think he was afraid of big money because the people would want to send in people to do due diligence.”

Glantz says he has not been questioned by the FBI or the SEC since Bernie's arrest.

Asked what he would say to Bernie if he had a chance to visit him in jail, Glantz says:

But Glantz says he's convinced that Bernie didn't act alone as he claimed to federal prosecutors.

Asked what John Robbins' reaction was when he told him all of his money was lost, Glantz says:

Remarkable, for sure.

In April 2009, with most if not all of his money gone and with the man who stole it behind bars, John Robbins made a lucrative deal with the publisher Ballantine to write a book appropriately entitled
The New Good Life
, described as “a manifesto for finding meaning beyond money, and a practical blueprint for living happily on less.”

An odd event occurred a week before Bernie was scheduled to be sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. At the Metropolitan Correctional Center where he had been held since pleading guilty to masterminding history's biggest Ponzi scheme, Bernie had a visitor. For three hours, he sat and talked with David Kotz, the inspector-general of the SEC. For months Kotz had been probing who at the regulatory agency might have known what Bernie was up to but did nothing with the information. Was Bernie suddenly cooperating? Was Bernie going to be a consultant for the agency he saw as his enemy—a consultant expert in spotting Ponzi schemes?

No one would comment on the meeting.

There was lots of other action, too, as the countdown to Bernie's historic sentencing began, overshadowed only by the sudden death of Michael Jackson and the passing of cancer victim Farrah Fawcett. One of those actions prompted the
New York Post
to declare: “Ponzi King Takes
Chutzpah
Crown.”

The angry headline was sparked by Bernie's plea seeking leniency. In a letter filed in Manhattan federal court, Ira Sorkin, Bernie's lawyer, asked for a prison term for his client of no more than 12 years when he was facing a maximum of 150 years for his crimes.

“We seek neither mercy nor sympathy,” he said in the letter. “Respectfully, we seek the justice and objectivity that have been—and we hope always will be—the bedrock of our criminal justice system.” According to Sorkin's logic based on Social Security Administration statistics, Bernie had a life expectancy of 13 more years beyond his 71, and the lawyer felt that a sentence of a dozen years would be appropriate. He said that “mob vengeance” surrounded the Madoff case. The
New York Daily News
blared, “Has Bernie Madoff 's lawyer gone mad?”

Immediately after Sorkin made his plea, federal prosecutors argued that because of the “unique scope and duration” of Bernie's crime he be given the maximum sentence. “Madoff 's crimes were of extraordinary dimensions,” the prosecutors said in a memorandum to U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin, the sentencing judge. The prosecutors also made note of a letter from the trustee in the case, who stated, “Mr. Madoff has not provided meaningful cooperation or assistance to the Trustee since his arrest.”

On the evening of June 26, three nights and a wake-up before Bernie was to be formally sentenced to prison for the rest of his natural days, he and Ruth were stripped of his stolen goods—declared to be $170 billion worth. The enormous amount was considered symbolic, and meant only that any future assets discovered by investigators would be seized and sold to help pay back the victimized investors.

But it also meant that Ruth would be penthouseless.

U.S. marshals were ordered by Judge Chin to sell the Madoffs' spectacular apartment, along with the Montauk beach house where in the summer of 2008 Bernie had held forth at his disgraced firm's annual beach party. Also to be put on the block was the Madoffs' Palm Beach house that was seized earlier. In all, the properties were valued at almost $22 million. Along with the homes, all the fancy cars and boats were to be sold off along with all personal property—from the antiques in the apartment that Ruth wasn't permitted to sit on, to the Steinway in the living room, the paintings on the walls, and whatever other expensive
tchotkes
were found anywhere in the Madoffs' possession.

Moreover, the forfeiture included millions of dollars in loans made over the years to family members such as Bernie's sons and brother, to friends, and to employees. In essence, the Madoffs were stripped bare of everything, except for $2.5 million that Ruth was permitted to keep “in settlement of the claims she would have otherwise brought against property,” according to the prosecutors.

The infamous Madoff dynasty was clearly at an end. The family had virtually been reduced to nothing. The Ponzi King and his royal family had lost the riches accumulated over the years, much of it stolen from trusting investors.

The disgraced, reviled financier now awaited being told where his final resting place would be.