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

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Here's the suit:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/metsmadoffsuit02042011.PDF

[ashie62]

Every Wilpon, Katz, their relatives and all Wilpon business are finished. Start with page 137.

Good God, what a fuckin greedy prick Wilpon is.

Thanks to JCL for this...

[metsmarathon]

749. To obtain a coveted BLMIS account through Sterling, however, was not easy. Sterling internally needed to approve the account, and Saul Katz had the final say. Far more outsiders were turned down than actually got into the elite pool of Madoff investors through Sterling. 750. Sterling took great strides to insulate the outsider account-holders from Madoff, as one of the requirements to obtain a BLMIS account through Sterling was that all communications regarding the account had to go through Sterling; never directly through Madoff or anyone else at BLMIS.

this does not look good.

i'm beginning to reverse my field on this whole thing...

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Katz out of the bag.

Not sure still how much they coulda/shoulda known, but amazin how closely the whole Wilpon fortune was related to Madoff.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

Well, they're not ducking the thing.

STATEMENT FROM FRED WILPON, CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN,
AND SAUL B. KATZ, CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF STERLING EQUITIES,
ON BEHALF OF THE STERLING EQUITIES PARTNERS AND THEIR FAMILIES
Dear Mets Fans:

Following days of leaks and press speculation, the Court - with the agreement of the Sterling partners - has released the complaint that was previously filed under seal.

The Trustee's lawsuit is an outrageous "strong arm" effort to try to force a settlement by threatening to ruin our reputations and businesses which we have built for over 50 years. This is a flagrant abuse of the Trustee's authority and we will not succumb to his pressure. The conclusions in the complaint are not supported by the facts. While they may make for good headlines, they are abusive, unfair and untrue. We categorically reject them. We should not be made victims twice over - the first time by Madoff, and again by the Trustee's actions.

The plain truth is that not one of the Sterling partners ever knew or suspected that Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme. Because the Trustee has no evidence to support his claims even after a year-and-a-half review of over 700,000 pages of documents and many, many hours of depositions, he has created a claim that we "knew or should have known" that Madoff was a fraud. Why should we "have known" when the SEC and other government agencies that had oversight responsibilities did not know? In fact, the SEC reported that Madoff was above board and legitimate, even after it investigated him many times. Madoff was not a hedge fund, but an SEC regulated broker dealer and like millions of other Americans, we trusted the brokerage statements we received. The Trustee is suing not only for what he defines as "fictitious profits" but for monies that we deposited with Madoff over almost 25 years. That is outrageous, unfounded and inconsistent with the law. Let us be clear, the Trustee is attempting to seize money originally invested with Madoff, which was earned from the Sterling businesses.

The Trustee also alleges that we were blinded to Madoff's crimes because our businesses "depended" on the returns. That is complete nonsense. We have good, sound businesses that were successful years before we invested with Madoff, including both real estate and the New York Mets. Those businesses never depended on returns from Madoff.

Our previous statements

All of the public statements we have issued to date have been accurate and true. We said when the fraud was first disclosed that the losses we suffered in the Madoff scheme would have no impact on the operations of the New York Mets and that was true. At the time, we could not have anticipated that a trustee would file a lawsuit seeking to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in addition to the substantial amounts that Madoff had stolen from us.

As we announced last Friday, we are now seeking one or more strategic partners in the New York Mets specifically because of the uncertainty created by the lawsuit filed by the Trustee in the Madoff bankruptcy.

We thought that Madoff was a friend for 25 years. That is why his betrayal was so painful. Each of the Sterling partners and their families invested with Madoff in good faith right up to the day his crime was exposed. We were as shocked as the rest of the world when the money in our accounts vanished along with the billions he swindled from thousands of other innocent people.

In summary, we are proud of what we have built and achieved as a family. We have worked very hard for our entire lives, always with character and integrity. We will not sit still while the Trustee or anyone else makes these outrageous and irresponsible allegations. People who know us know the truth about who we are and what our life's work represents.

Again, we have done nothing wrong. We played by the rules. We abided by the court order not to discuss the lawsuit. Others did not. We are confident we will win in court.

Complete coverage at mets.com �
STATEMENT BY ROBERT B. FISKE, JR., KAREN E. WAGNER, AND DAVID L. CAPLAN OF DAVIS POLK & WARDWELL LLP ON BEHALF OF THE STERLING DEFENDANTS
Following days of leaks and press speculation, the Court, with the agreement of the Sterling partners, has released the complaint against our clients that was previously filed under seal. While the heated rhetoric in the complaint may generate headlines, it is not supported by the facts, the law, or the extensive discovery record developed by the Trustee before he formulated the complaint - numerous depositions and over 700,000 pages of documents provided by the Sterling partners over the last year and a half.

The bottom line is that the Sterling partners were innocent victims of the Madoff fraud, and the Trustee's massive discovery effort did not uncover one shred of evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, the complaint further victimizes the Sterling partners by arguing that they "knew or should have known" that Madoff was a fraud and therefore are somehow liable for amounts beyond their very substantial losses. This suggestion is false.

With regard to the complaint:

The complaint appears to contend that, because the Sterling partners are wealthy and successful individuals, they should have known Madoff was not trading any securities and was engaging in a Ponzi scheme. Yet the Sterling partners had over $500 million in their Madoff accounts at the time of his failure - some put in only days before - and all of it lost. Anyone who knows Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz knows that they would not have dealt for one minute with someone they thought might be engaged in fraud. Moreover, as a matter of elementary common sense, no rational person who thinks his broker might be a fraud would leave such a substantial sum with him.

Contrary to what the Trustee asserts, the returns on the Sterling-related brokerage accounts were not "staggering," "easy money," or "too good to be true." The $300 million of profit alleged in the complaint, even if accurate, would not be "staggering" or extraordinary when viewed in the context of the amount of principal invested over the past 25 years.

In addition, the $300 million claimed in the complaint reflects only those accounts that the Trustee has selected for inclusion because they were profitable. It ignores numerous accounts that, in the Trustee's parlance, were "net losers," which, according to our clients' analysis, total approximately $160 million.

Madoff investments did not "fuel" our clients' operating businesses. The Sterling partners' wealth was generated by their hard-earned success in real estate, sports, media, and other businesses - not by investments with Madoff.

The complaint also ignores the fact that Madoff was viewed as a person of considerable stature in the financial community. He had been the chairman of the board of directors of NASDAQ, a member of the NASD board of governors, and a member of the board of what now is SIFMA - an eminent figure in the investment world. He also partnered with prominent financial institutions to create Primex, an electronic auction trading system that was approved by the SEC and adopted by NASDAQ. Moreover, the Sterling partners knew, and relied upon, the fact that the SEC - the federal agency charged with uncovering and prosecuting fraud - had investigated Madoff and taken no action against him.

For 25 years the Sterling partners saw nothing to indicate that Madoff was not trading securities as he was reporting he did. Moreover, the partners took legitimate comfort from the fact that numerous highly regarded and sophisticated lending institutions readily accepted their Madoff investments as security for multi-million dollar loans.

The Sterling partners' dealings with their broker were entirely lawful. While the Trustee calls payments made to them "fictitious profit," he ignores a large and consistent body of state and federal law that permits a customer of a registered broker dealer to rely on statements he receives from the broker - and which imposes no investigatory obligation upon a customer who in any event would have no way of confirming what the broker was doing. Payments made in connection with those statements are lawful. Our entire system of customer dealings with brokers is structured so that customers receive, and rely on, their account statements and confirmations. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply incorrect.

The complaint appears to argue that the partners should have known that Madoff was a fraud for three principal reasons:

First, they were friendly with Madoff and could have asked him if he was engaging in a fraud. Neither the law nor common sense supports such a proposition.

Second, in 2002 the partners diversified their securities investments by establishing a new company to be run by Peter Stamos. The Sterling partners were investors and had no role with respect to investment decisions. Nonetheless, we understand the complaint to contend that, because two of the partners were involved in the selection of Mr. Stamos and the establishment of the fund, they became expert in market trading, hedge fund due diligence, and broker dealer regulation, and, therefore, if people said things to them like "I don't know how Madoff does it," the Sterling partners should have realized that Madoff was doing no trading and running a Ponzi scheme. Thus, the theory of the complaint appears to be that comments of this type should have led the Sterling partners to reach a conclusion that the SEC, with the benefit of substantially more information, trained fraud investigators, and subpoena power, did not reach. Similarly, we understand the complaint to claim that, because Merrill Lynch, when it acquired part of the Stamos company in 2007, would not permit investment with managers employing "black box" or other similar strategies, the Sterling partners should have concluded that Madoff's registered brokerage operation was fraudulent. In fact, many people invest with managers using such proprietary strategies, which are entirely lawful. That Merrill Lynch decided not to means nothing.

Third, the complaint suggests that, because Sterling Stamos had invested in the Bayou hedge fund, the Sterling partners should have realized that Madoff was a fraud. Again, the proposition is wide of the mark - the partners had no involvement with the Bayou investment, and Bayou was a completely different situation. Bayou was a hedge fund. Madoff's brokerage entity, on the other hand, was a registered broker dealer, regulated by the SEC, that issued statements reflecting trading for customers.

The complaint is further undercut by another fundamental fact not mentioned by the Trustee: if the Sterling partners had thought Madoff might be engaged in a fraud - a conclusion they never reached - their recourse would have been to go to the SEC, the watchdog that licensed Madoff and that is there to protect customers. This would have been a futile exercise. As we know now, the fraud would not have been uncovered.

The complaint, in our opinion, is an unwarranted reach by the Trustee. The Sterling partners lost more than money in the Madoff fraud - they lost faith in someone they thought was a trusted friend. But their faith in the legal system remains strong, and we are confident they will prevail.

[metsmarathon]

The complaint is further undercut by another fundamental fact not mentioned by the Trustee: if the Sterling partners had thought Madoff might be engaged in a fraud - a conclusion they never reached - their recourse would have been to go to the SEC, the watchdog that licensed Madoff and that is there to protect customers. This would have been a futile exercise. As we know now, the fraud would not have been uncovered.

zing!

[metirish]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Katz out of the bag. Not sure still how much they coulda/shoulda known, but amazin how closely the whole Wilpon fortune was related to Madoff.

remember when this all dropped and Jeff getting all incredulous when asked about the finances and talking about how they as a family diversify their portfolios , it's what us rich do you morons.

[Edgy MD]

Well, considering how little he entered this game with, climbing from a 1% owner of a $21.1 million franchise to owning the full $800 million baby (along with family members), you would expect there was a slick shell game going on --- wealth moving around quickly as needed rather than being available outright.

What you maybe wouldn't expect is that when his hands got too old to move the shells around, there wasn't a ball under any of them.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

metirish wrote: John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Katz out of the bag. Not sure still how much they coulda/shoulda known, but amazin how closely the whole Wilpon fortune was related to Madoff. remember when this all dropped and Jeff getting all incredulous when asked about the finances and talking about how they as a family diversify their portfolios , it's what us rich do you morons.

Oh yeah. "It's called diversifying."

[Gwreck]

I haven't read the complaint yet, but my initial reaction from the Press Statements is that they seem to contradict Jeff Wilpon's prior contentions that estimates of the Mets' losses were inaccurate or overstated.

According to the press statement, the Sterling entities had "over $500 million" in Madoff accounts that was lost.

[Frayed Knot]

So they either made money, lost some, or lost a ton depending on what day of the week it is.

I can't get too involved in this stuff until we're within a Prince Fielder HR of what the facts are supposed to be.

[Ceetar]

Frayed Knot wrote: So they either made money, lost some, or lost a ton depending on what day of the week it is. I can't get too involved in this stuff until we're within a Prince Fielder HR of what the facts are supposed to be.

Also depending on how you define complicated words like "loss" and "profit".

And people really do this for a living? I'm going to kick a laywer the next time I see one.

[metirish]

I expect a full report from our resident lawyer on this.

[Edgy MD]

We certainly have more than one.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Saul's buddy from LI Jewish Hospital teamed the Wlkatzes for the "Sterling Stamos" fund that invested in the bayou scheme. After Madoff was arrested:

in a telling December 12, 2008 email exchange, one Sterling Stamos employee confirmed that Sterling Stamos� Chief Investment Officer had fingered Madoff as a fraud for years: [A] lot of our investors gave us crap about not generating returns like Madoff�s[�]and I guess our CIO always said it was a scam, �too good to be true[.]� Well there u [sic] go, it was too good to be true[.] The Chief Investment Officer that this employee referred to in her email is Chachra, who had the official title of Chief Investment Strategist and worked at Sterling Stamos from its inception in June 2002 through late 2009.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

More from Stamos:

Fortunately, our firm did not invest with Madoff. That firm and fund wouldn't make it through our risk and ops controls--lack of transparency, no third party administrator, etc. Unfortunately, our partners--Saul and Fred--against our recommendations invested as individuals and through their real estate firm.

Would be funny if it were John Stamos.

[Edgy MD]

I have one of those big brains --- like the guys on Star Trek with the vibrating veins on the side of the skull --- but I'd be lying if I told you I could see all (or most) of the angles here.

[metsmarathon]

Ceetar wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: So they either made money, lost some, or lost a ton depending on what day of the week it is. I can't get too involved in this stuff until we're within a Prince Fielder HR of what the facts are supposed to be. Also depending on how you define complicated words like "loss" and "profit". And people really do this for a living? I'm going to kick a laywer the next time I see one.

can't wait for the next board meet-up!

[Benjamin Grimm]

Frayed Knot wrote: I can't get too involved in this stuff until we're within a Prince Fielder HR of what the facts are supposed to be.

Me neither. I really only care about what happens on the field. This may have an impact on that, but I can't plunge myself into all these details. Too arcane for me anyway.

I'm not one of the Wilpon haters (who are legion); I'm pretty indifferent to them. But if this lawsuit is going to go on for years (as it well might) then I'd prefer to see them sell their entire interest in the Mets. And I hope that Bud Selig (I hate having to count on him for anything) uses the "best interest of the game" to pressue them into doing just that.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The complaint is further undercut by another fundamental fact not mentioned by the Trustee: if the Sterling partners had thought Madoff might be engaged in a fraud - a conclusion they never reached - their recourse would have been to go to the SEC, the watchdog that licensed Madoff and that is there to protect customers. This would have been a futile exercise. As we know now, the fraud would not have been uncovered. zing!

I'm guessing that the SEC's failure to shut down Madoff earlier, by itself, would not be enough to clear Sterling. One issue here might simply be whether or not Wilpon/Katz reported Madoff to the SEC -- but not how the SEC might have then responded.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: ... if this lawsuit is going to go on for years (as it well might) then I'd prefer to see them sell their entire interest in the Mets. And I hope that Bud Selig (I hate having to count on him for anything) uses the "best interest of the game" to pressue them into doing just that.

I agree. But I thought that Selig was named Commissioner of Baseball primarily to act in the best interests of the owners rather than the game.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Edgy DC wrote: I have one of those big brains --- like the guys on Star Trek with the vibrating veins on the side of the skull --- but I'd be lying if I told you I could see all (or most) of the angles here.

Same (at least about the latter part). And that's why we'll never be meddlesome part-owners of our favorite sports squadron.

[bmfc1]

"Known or should have known" is going to be tough to prove. The complaints tries to show that the Wilpons and Katz are savvy businessmen but they are experts in real estate and not Wall Street. Maybe it can be proved but I'm guessing that eventually, Piccard realizes that he can't prove anything and the Wilpons/Katz give him a good amount, but far less than sought, to settle.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I've read enough to conclude Katz is/was 100% guilty of willful ignorance of the warning signs of fraud, and I'm almost surprised he wasn't rounded up with Madoff. Still don't know if that means the Mets will have to cough it up tho.

[batmagadanleadoff]

BTW, I think that Sterling agreed to unseal the complaint only because the presiding judge tipped his intentions at an earlier conference: the judge told both sides that he was leaning towards deciding the motion to unseal in favor of the NYT and unsealing the complaint. I forget where I read or heard this, though.



(I have no first hand personal knowledge of this. I'm just sayin')

[smg58]

bmfc1 wrote: "Known or should have known" is going to be tough to prove.

That's terrible language. If the former is true, there's no need to include the latter. By including the latter, it implies that they can't prove that the Wilpons knew. And "should have known" means what, exactly? A number of investment firms were suspicious about Madoff but didn't act on their suspicions. The Wilpons, as bmfc pointed out, are real-estate specialists.

[Edgy MD]

Be fair, they're crackerjack baseball men also.

[ashie62]

smg58 wrote: bmfc1 wrote: "Known or should have known" is going to be tough to prove. That's terrible language. If the former is true, there's no need to include the latter. By including the latter, it implies that they can't prove that the Wilpons knew. And "should have known" means what, exactly? A number of investment firms were suspicious about Madoff but didn't act on their suspicions. The Wilpons, as bmfc pointed out, are real-estate specialists.

Some of those "suspicious" firms are being sued.

Publicly, Fred is finished in the court of public opinion.. It's gonna be one empty stadium this season and what FA in his right mind would sign with the Mets if this suit is still out there a year from?

Its over..And the prick even knocked down Shea

[Benjamin Grimm]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: I agree. But I thought that Selig was named Commissioner of Baseball primarily to act in the best interests of the owners rather than the game.

Well, you could argue that it's in the best interests of the owners, collectively, not to have a big mess in one of the larger markets. (I'm not sure how true that really is, but it's an argument that could be made.)

[metirish]

I expect to see a lot of Koufax at Spring Training , he's a good diversion for Fred.