Madoff muddle

The biggest lawsuit, a claim of $19.6 billion, was filed against an Orthodox Jewish woman in Austria named Sonja Kohn. A housewife turned banker who was born in Vienna and resided in the Orthodox community of Monsey, N. Y., in the 1980s, Kohn is described in the suit as the biggest feeder of investo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWashington Jewish week Vol. 46; no. 50
Main Author Berkman, Jacob
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Gaithersburg Washington Jewish Week 16.12.2010
Subjects
Entrepreneurs
Jewish organizations
Litigation
Madoff, Bernard L
Pyramid operations
United States > US
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0746-9373

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Summary:The biggest lawsuit, a claim of $19.6 billion, was filed against an Orthodox Jewish woman in Austria named Sonja Kohn. A housewife turned banker who was born in Vienna and resided in the Orthodox community of Monsey, N. Y., in the 1980s, Kohn is described in the suit as the biggest feeder of investor money into Madoff funds. She allegedly conspired with Madoff to lure investors, and reportedly withdrew some $423 million from Madoff's fund just a month before Madoff was arrested in 2008. Representatives for Kohn have denied any wrongdoing. Other Jewish institutions that benefited from the Ponzi scheme reached settlements with the Madoff estate's trustee, Irving Picard, before the Dec. 1 1 deadline for filing the so-called clawback lawsuits. Picard filed more than 1,000 such lawsuits. One of Madoff's largest suppliers of investors in the United States was J. Ezra Merkin. The former chair of the financial services giant GMAC, Merkin funneled some $2 billion of investors' money to Madoff. Merkin is now the subject of multiple civil lawsuits brought by investors and the New York State attorney general.
ISSN:0746-9373