I couldn’t agree more. But I’m sure if Wilpon or anyone of his investors questioned why Madoff was using a questionable “auditor,” he would reply that he was either saving costs by hiring them and thus saving his clients money or was engaging in very aggressive positions that only a pushover auditor would allow in an effort to make them more money. With Madoff being seen as a genius by some, I think his clients would let it slide as long as the returns kept rolling in.

since wilpon was a close friend of madoff and probably in on this scheme from the beginning he was probably making butt loads moeny with maddoff for a while. of course that money he was “earning” was really other peoples money that madoff was essentially stealing and dispersing to his older clients. now wilpon and the rest of the early investors are going to claim that they were duped and that they “lost” all the money they invested with madoff, which is a lot of bs. theyre not disputing these huge numbers when they get reported because if it becomes known that they profited from this scam and new it was illegal then they will suffer even greater penalties and even go to jail. when youre involved in a ponzi scheme, you can either lose money legally or make money illegally.

thats whats not getting reported. yes billions were invested but besides the money spent by madoff and what he had in his bank account, the rest of the money was either legally lost in the market or illegally paid back to the “investors”. so the original friends of madoff were the ones that madoff had to pay back, which is why he started those funnel accounts that he needed to steal from so he could pay these people back.

wilpon may end up getting screwed royally on this whole deal, but not for the reasons that are getting reported in the post.

here is a column a while back from the wsj that explains some more.