Sec. Investor Prot. Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Inv. Sec. LLC (In re Madoff)

603 B.R. 682
CourtUnited States Bankruptcy Court, S.D. New York
DecidedJune 25, 2019
DocketAdv. Pro. No. 08-01789 (SMB) (Substantively Consolidated); Adv. Pro. No. 10-05286 (SMB)
StatusPublished
Cited by136 cases

This text of 603 B.R. 682 (Sec. Investor Prot. Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Inv. Sec. LLC (In re Madoff)) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Bankruptcy Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sec. Investor Prot. Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Inv. Sec. LLC (In re Madoff), 603 B.R. 682 (N.Y. 2019).

Opinion

Some courts have used the following four-factor test to determine the existence of a Ponzi scheme:

1) deposits were made by investors; 2) the Debtor conducted little or no legitimate business operations as represented to investors; 3) the purported business operation of the Debtor produced little or no profits or earnings; and 4) the source of payments to investors was from cash infused by new investors.

Armstrong v. Collins , No. 01 Civ. 2437 (PAC), 2010 WL 1141158, at *22 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 24, 2010), reconsideration denied , No. 01 Civ. 2437 (PAC), 2011 WL 308260 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 31, 2011) ; accord Wiand v. Waxenberg , 611 F. Supp. 2d 1299, 1312 (M.D. Fla. 2009) ; Forman v. Salzano (In re Norvergence, Inc. ), 405 B.R. 709, 730 (Bankr. D. N.J. 2009) ; Rieser v. Hayslip (In re Canyon Sys. Corp. ), 343 B.R. 615, 630 (Bankr. S.D. Ohio 2006). Ultimately, however, the Ponzi scheme label applies "to any sort of inherently fraudulent arrangement under which the debtor-transferor must utilize after-acquired investment funds to pay off previous investors in order to forestall disclosure of the fraud." Manhattan Inv. Fund , 397 B.R. at 12 ; accord Gowan v. Amaranth Advisors L.L.C. (In re Dreier LLP ), Adv. Proc. Nos. 10-03493, 10-05447 (SMB), 2014 WL 47774, at *9 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Jan. 3, 2014) ; Bayou Superfund, LLC v. WAM Long/Short Fund II, L.P. (In re Bayou Grp., LLC ), 362 B.R. 624, 633 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2007).

The Trustee relies primarily on the plea allocutions of Madoff and another former BLMIS employee, Frank DiPascali,7 to prove that BLMIS was operated as a Ponzi scheme.8 Madoff admitted *690that "for many years up until my arrest on December 11, 2008, I operated a Ponzi scheme through the investment advisory side of [BLMIS]," (Madoff Allocution at 23:14-17), and described how he misrepresented to investment advisory ("IA") clients that he would invest their funds using the so-called split-strike-conversion ("SSC") strategy:

Through the [SSC strategy] I promised to clients and prospective clients that client funds would be invested in a basket of common stocks within the Standard & Poors 100 index, a collection of the 100 largest publicly-traded companies in terms of their market capitalization. I promised that I would select a basket of stocks that would closely mimic the price movements of the Standard & Poors index. I promised that I would opportunistically time those purchases and would be out of the market intermittently, investing client funds during these periods in United States Government-issued securities, such as United States Treasury bills. In addition, I promised that as part of the [SSC strategy], I would hedge the investments I made in the basket of common stocks by using client funds to buy and sell option contracts related to those stocks, thereby limiting potential client losses caused by unpredictable changes in stock prices. In fact, I never made those investments I promised to clients, who believed they were invested with me in the [SSC strategy].

(Madoff Allocution at 25:25-26:18.)

As Madoff never invested in securities on behalf of his IA clients (which included Legacy), the securities positions listed on the BLMIS account statements were fictitious, and redemptions were paid from a commingled bank account containing the deposits of all IA customers:

The essence of my scheme was that I represented to clients and prospective clients who wished to open investment advisory and individual trading accounts with me that I would invest their money in shares of common stock, options, and other securities of large well-known corporations, and upon request, would return to them their profits and principal. Those representations were false for many years. Up until I was arrested on December 11, 2008, I never invested these funds in the securities, as I had promised. Instead, those funds were deposited in a bank account at Chase Manhattan Bank. When clients wished to receive the profits they believed they had earned with me or to redeem their principal, I used the money in the Chase Manhattan bank account that belonged to them or other clients to pay the requested funds.

(Id. at 24:9-22.) DiPascali similarly admitted that BLMIS made no actual trades for its IA customers:

THE DEFENDANT: From at least the early 1990s through December of 2008, there was one simple fact that Bernie Madoff knew, that I knew, and that other people knew but that we never told the clients nor did we tell the regulators like the SEC. No purchases of [sic] sales of securities were actually taking *691place in their accounts. It was all fake. It was all fictitious. It was wrong and I knew it was wrong at the time, sir.
THE COURT: When did you realize that?
THE DEFENDANT: In the late '80s or early '90s.
...
From our office in Manhattan at Bernie Madoff's direction, and together with others, I represented to hundreds, if not thousands, of clients that security trades were being placed in their accounts when in fact no trades were taking place at all.

(DiPascali Allocution at 46:9-25.) To cover up the fraud, Madoff and BLMIS generated trade confirmations and account statements containing "bogus transactions and positions." (Madoff Allocution at 27:9-13; see also DiPascali Allocution at 47:16-22 ("On a regular basis I used hindsight to file historical prices on stocks then I used those prices to post purchase of [sic] sales to customer accounts as if they had been executed in realtime. On a regular basis I added fictitious trade data to account statements of certain clients to reflect the specific rate of ... return that Bernie Madoff had directed for that client.").)

The allocutions establish prima facie that Madoff ran BLMIS as a Ponzi scheme. Madoff admitted to operating a Ponzi scheme, (Madoff Allocution at 23:15-16), failing to invest customer funds as promised, (Id. at 24:9-17), paying redemption requests with customer deposits, (Id. at 24:18-22) and issuing bogus customer statements and trade confirmations to conceal the fraud. (Id.

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Bluebook (online)
603 B.R. 682, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sec-investor-prot-corp-v-bernard-l-madoff-inv-sec-llc-in-re-madoff-nysb-2019.