Big News! (update: Mets Minority Stake For Sale)

[batmagadanleadoff]

Let's see what the complaint alleges, if it's unsealed next week. If Sterling's surplus was in the hundreds of millions, then at the very least, they had to have known that Madoff's fund was a scam. If Wilpon was allegedly steering others into Madoff's scam, perhaps for a commission, then I'd lean towards "they were in on it". If the complaint is unsealed, anyone who was allegedly steered towards Madoff by Sterling (if that's even an allegation) will be able to go public with their side of the story. The unsealing of this complaint has the potential to elicit a shitstorm of follow-up bad news.


OT: I hate your new avatar. Bobby V. looks like he put on 75 pounds, all in his stomach, and is sprouting devils' horns.

[ashie62]

MLK3, Krane and others to possibly form a group to buy no less than a majority stake in the Mets or the entire enchilda..

http://mlb-facts-and-rumors.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22297882/27310973

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

Heyman is such an idiot:

H tweets: @SI_JonHeyman doesnt martlin luther king III have anything better to do? #mets

[dgwphotography]

metirish wrote: So, on a scale of 0-100 (100 indicating 100% certainty), what percentage describes your opinon that the 'Pons were getting their money out with advance knowledge that they were caught in an illegal scheme? Geez , their families were friends right? , good friends apparently....I'd say I am 65% convinced that the Wilpon's and Katz knew something was funny with the money.

I'm starting to learn towards 85 - looks like this wasn't the only Ponzi scheme they've been a part of..

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/sports/baseball/31mets.html?_r=2&hp

[metirish]

dgwphotography wrote: So, on a scale of 0-100 (100 indicating 100% certainty), what percentage describes your opinon that the 'Pons were getting their money out with advance knowledge that they were caught in an illegal scheme? Geez , their families were friends right? , good friends apparently....I'd say I am 65% convinced that the Wilpon's and Katz knew something was funny with the money. I'm starting to learn towards 85 - looks like this wasn't the only Ponzi scheme they've been a part of.. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/sports/baseball/31mets.html?_r=2&hp

Fucks sake Fred


Can I go on record here and state with clarity of a sound mind that the Mets as we know them will be under new complete ownership within 12 to 18 months.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I imagine that if this continues, Bud Selig will start pressuring the Wilpons to sell. He may have a bromance with Fred going on, but I think he understands the importance of not having a failing franchise (and by that I mean one that can't afford to compete with the big boys) in New York City.

[Ceetar]

Interesting article, but I'm not sure what it means, if anything. Seems like the company that invested in that other scheme learned it's lesson and didn't invest with Madoff. Does that mean they knew before hand? Probably not.

I think they'res a difference between checking after the company your investing in terms of what they're doing with your money versus actually investigating them for wrongdoing. Just because they noticed something they didn't like (whether or not it was an effect caused by illegal doings) and pulled out doesn't mean they were snooping around and investigating the specific practices of Madoff? Could it simply be that they wisened up to the garbage Madoff was spewing and just grew to not trust him with their money?

It looks like they had to pay back 13 million of 30 invested. They invested 500 or so million in Madoff, if the same proportion holds true, it's roughly the 20-25% stake they're talking about selling.

[metsmarathon]

if i may ask... what's the proper course of action then?

lets say i have a friend who tells me that he can make me rich, and that i need to invest with him. i scrounge up what i can, and sadly, it amounts to a meager $26.20, but i'm hoping it can increase to thepoint where i could be a player the next time the mets come up for sale.

a few years down the line, as my buddy tells me that i'm getting richer and richer, and after i've invested more and more money with him - i'm up to $5,000, but he tells me he's sitting on a good $10,000 more - i start to think something is up. he's driving around a really fancy souped up corolla, and is always giving me a hard time when i ask him to outlay some cash.

what can i do? i don't want to lose my money. yet, apparently, if i try to get it back, it can be taken from me.

is the appropriate course of action to simply alert the authorities, and sit back and wait for the chips to fall wherever they may, and in the meantime leave their money in the hands of the guy they think is running a con?

would the wilpons have been able to walk away with their principal investments had they withdrawn it (and only it), and then turned in madoff?

[Edgy MD]

A lot of that is playing itself out.

My opinion on what I would do has changed a few times.

[Valadius]

Who wants to bet Lenny Dykstra is going to come swaggering in on a balloon of hot air claiming he got some money somehow and wants in on the deal?

[dgwphotography]

Valadius wrote: Who wants to bet Lenny Dykstra is going to come swaggering in on a balloon of hot air claiming he got some money somehow and wants in on the deal?

hahaha - he has enough of his own lawsuits to worry about.

[ashie62]

Avoid hedge funds. They are still largely unregulated and not terribly transparent.

[Edgy MD]

I logged onto the Mets website as my wife called me from the next room. As I arrived at her side, the load finished and a press conf. clip played... something along the lines of "I just want to make clear that the matter of today's announcement will have no effect on the day-to-day operations of the Mets."

Wifey starts cracking up and finishes the quote on her own. "You can be assured that Met managers will still make dumb decisions. That will not change. Players will continue to perform erratically, beat up their relatives, be arrested, and be rightfully charged with felonies. Fans need not fear that anything will change on that front."

[ashie62]

Edgy DC wrote: I logged onto the Mets website as my wife called me from the next room. As I arrived at her side, the load finished and a press conf. clip played... something along the lines of "I just want to make clear that the matter of today's announcement will have no effect on the day-to-day operations of the Mets." Wifey starts cracking up and finishes the quote on her own. "You can be assured that Met managers will still make dumb decisions. That will not change. Players will continue to perform erratically, beat up their relatives, be arrested, and be rightfully charged with felonies. Fans need not fear that anything will change on that front."

Sadly, you both may present our best case scenario.

[Edgy MD]

Now how is Super Secret Seaver lasting beyond 4141? The whole system is out of order?

[metirish]

If Super Secret Seaver doesn't correspond with 4141then the whole concept falls apart, please ensure that it does.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The New York Times ain't letting go of the Mets-Madoff story.

Excerpts:

When the Mets negotiated their larger contracts with star players � complex deals with signing bonuses and performance incentives � they sometimes adopted the strategy of placing deferred money owed the players with Mr. Madoff�s investment firm. They would have to pay the player, but the owners of the club would be able to make money for themselves in the meantime. There never seemed to be much doubt about that, according to several people with knowledge of the arrangements. �Bernie was part of the business plan for the Mets,� a former employee of the club said. But Mr. Wilpon involved more than his team with Mr. Madoff. He also encouraged certain friends to invest.

�The relationship between Fred and Bernie became closer and closer because Bernie was returning more and more to Fred in terms of his investments while Bernie is getting exposure from Fred and Saul,� said Jerry Reisman, a lawyer in Garden City, N.Y., who has represented 10 or so commercial real estate investors who lost a total of some $150 million to Mr. Madoff. �They both relied on one another,� he said. �It was reciprocal, symbiotic. They both relied on each other for money, and Bernie also relied on Fred for contacts.�

According to an analysis of the list of Mr. Madoff�s 15,000 clients, done by Jamie Peppard, a former financial auditor who has studied the Madoff case, more than 500 accounts can be tied to Mr. Wilpon and Mr. Katz.

[Valadius]

Oh no, don't tell me Bobby Bonilla is going to come calling.

[Gwreck]

That Bonilla's deferred payments were invested with Madoff is not new; that rumor was around a while ago but never confirmed.

[metsmarathon]

it reads to me that the wilpons, in their dealings with madoff, were an uncomfortable mix of negligent and naiive, far moreso that malicious and devious.

i don't know if that makes me feel any better.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Gwreck wrote: That Bonilla's deferred payments were invested with Madoff is not new; that rumor was around a while ago but never confirmed.

Yes. But the point that the NYT wants to make, I'm supposing here, is that the Mets were so sure that they could invest Bonilla's salary in a fund that would not only generate whatever interest rates Bonilla agreed to for his deferred payments, but on top of that, also generate a profit for the Mets.

You have to assume that Bonilla was represented by a team of sophisticated lawyers and finance guys when he contracted with the Mets. If those "Madoff" rates of gain were as sure a thing as Wilpon allegedly thought, then Bonilla's team would've known about them, being savvy and all, and knowing the market. Bonilla's team would have then negotiated a higher rate of return for their client, thus cutting into the Mets anticipated profit.

Maybe the point of all of this is that Bonilla's team never considered the kind of spread that the Mets were anticipating, because that spread was unrealistic. Do you see where this is going?

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I'm kinda beginning to.

[Edgy MD]

metsmarathon wrote: it reads to me that the wilpons, in their dealings with madoff, were an uncomfortable mix of negligent and naiive, far moreso that malicious and devious. i don't know if that makes me feel any better.

I'll root for negligent and naive. I'm in bed with these people.

[ashie62]

I think I do...Could Wilpon be so dense not to see through this?

[batmagadanleadoff]

Ashie62 wrote: I think I do...Could Wilpon be so dense not to see through this?

That's the [crossout]million dollar[/crossout]
[crossout]47.8 million dollar[/crossout]
[crossout]300 million dollar[/crossout]
[crossout]400 million dollar[/crossout]
[crossout]500 million dollar[/crossout]
one thousand million(?) dollar question.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy DC wrote: metsmarathon wrote: it reads to me that the wilpons, in their dealings with madoff, were an uncomfortable mix of negligent and naiive, far moreso that malicious and devious. i don't know if that makes me feel any better. I'll root for negligent and naive. I'm in bed with these people.

But do you wanna be?

[Edgy MD]

Well, I can think of some sexier people to be in bed with.

Now, this has to play out. If they're a party to this, they likely won't survive as owners. If they're not, they likely will. In the meantime, I'll be excited to get some new blood in here.

[Lefty Specialist]

Remember that Madoff was a financial icon, former head of NASDAQ. It was inconceivable to people that he'd be a Ponzi-schemer. If they got the tap on the shoulder that they'd made the cut and Bernie would consent to investing their money, they felt great. In a situation like that, you're not asking questions, you're looking at the client base. If all these rich and powerful people are using him, he must be good, right?

That's how it went on for so long- trust. Most Ponzi schemes fall apart of their own weight pretty quickly. But the exclusivity, the feeling of belonging to a private club that the common man couldn't enter, kept it going. There were always people outside clamoring to get in, so there was always a supply of new money.

The fact that the 90's and 00's were for the most part a pretty good time for investors helped to mask things, too. The high, consistent paper returns may have been good, but people didn't think they were impossible, especially to a guy as smart and plugged-in as Madoff. It's only when the market turned down sharply that the scheme was exposed.

Fred could be easily blinded. But he should have had people working for him, the real bean-counters, who should have said that something was fishy. Who knows, maybe they did.

[Valadius]

Who else besides Bonilla and Frank Cashen had their deferred payments invested with Madoff?

[Frayed Knot]

Valadius wrote: Who else besides Bonilla and Frank Cashen had their deferred payments invested with Madoff?

Probably everyone who had a deferred structure.
The Times article kind of implies that deferring money so you can invest the remainder during the interim was unique to the Mets or something but that's what everyone does with deferred payments, essentially it's the purpose of structuring a contract with deferred payments.

The problem comes up in that not all investments are made with a swindler.