Judge freezes assets of Madoff's brother

By Adam Goldman | March 27, 2009, Friday |

Print Edition

A judge on Wednesday temporarily froze the assets of Bernard Madoff's brother after he was accused in a lawsuit of losing nearly a half million dollars in a trust he administered.

The lawsuit filed in Nassau County court in New York last week claims Peter B. Madoff took US$478,000 that belonged to Andrew Ross Samuels, 22, and invested it in his brother's Ponzi scheme that fleeced investors of billions of dollars.

Samuels, a Brooklyn law student from Long Island, received the money from his grandfather, Martin J. Joel, who had placed it in the trust in 1997 to help pay for the young man's education. It was meant to be his inheritance.

Both Joel and Peter Madoff administered the trust, the lawsuit said. But after Joel died in 2003, Peter Madoff became the sole trustee and invested Samuels' money in his brother's firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, the lawsuit said.

Steven R. Schlesinger, Samuels' lawyer, said on Wednesday Peter Madoff had a fiduciary duty to protect the money. "Instead, he put in a phony business," Schlesinger said. "He blew it."

The lawsuit claims the student's money was "used to pay fictitious returns to other investors of BMIS as part of the massive Ponzi scheme." The lawsuit also said that Peter Madoff had "full knowledge that it was a fraudulent Ponzi scheme and nothing more than an unprecedented fraud."

The trust is now worthless, according to the lawsuit.

Economy

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Judge freezes assets of Madoff's brother

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