On Friday the lawyer announced that $11 million was invested by two businessmen with the firm of the accused cheat Bernard Madoff just days before his arrest will be break off from other money recovered for investors. Their attorney Howard Kleinhendler argued that his clients' money in Madoff firm bank accounts should not be part of assets distributed to investors by a court-appointed trustee overseeing the firm's liquidation.
The sums of money that Kleinhendler's clients invested actually are negligibly small compared with the billions of dollars that hedge funds and super-rich clients around the world have lost. Documents attached to the lawsuits identify two employees of New York-based Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC: Frank DiPascali and Jodi Crupi, who handled the wire transfers faxed to the bank.
Kleinhendler filed the first lawsuit on January, 1 against the trustee, lawyer Irving Picard, and JP Morgan Chase bank on behalf of New York fuel company businessman Martin Rosenman, whose $10 million investment was wired by Madoff's firm to a JP Morgan Chase account on December 5 six days before Madoff was arrested. And second he filed on January, 7 on behalf of Miami businessman Stanley Kriegler's firm, Hadleigh Holdings LLC, to recover $1 million deposited on December 8 in a Madoff firm account at the same bank.
Accordin to the court documents, Trustee will withhold from distribution the amount of $10,000,000 until the merits of the case are adjudicated. The same order was also applied to Hadleigh's $1 million.
