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The SS Madoff Sinks; Wake Lifts All Boats?

John Pacenti of the DBR turns in a nice piece on the local lawyers and accountants salivating over the Madoff disaster:

Mark Raymond, managing partner of Broad and Cassel?s Miami office, said he represents a number of clients who lost millions when Madoff?s house of cards collapsed.

?There are people whose boat has capsized, and they are adrift,? he said. ?There are families who went to bed at night with multimillion-dollar networks. I?m talking about networks worth $30, $50, $70 million, and all they have left are their homes and their cars because they put all of their money with Madoff.?

Raymond and other attorneys contacted for this story said the receiver, New York attorney Lee Richards of Richards Kibbe & Orbe, will take over what?s left of the investment firm bearing Madoff?s name and target investors who made money before the fall.

?They may have gotten out of the Titanic alive, but the ship may come back and sink them down the road,? said Lewis Freeman, a forensic accountant and attorney with Lewis B. Freeman & Associates in Miami.

Fired up, Lew continued:

"Yeah, it's like the investors are a penniless stowaway who think they're the king of the world, and Madoff is like a beautiful young socialite who is dangerously attracted to the stowaway but has agreed to marry Billy Zane. And Norm Braman is like Molly Brown. Is any of this making any sense?"

You know, I was ok with the sinking boat imagery when it was in Mark's steady hands. But leave it to Lew to always finds a way to take it one step too far.

UPDATE:

Intrepid reporter Julie Kay finds more local lawyers who want to sue some as-yet-unknown entities over Madoff. No sinking boat references, but there is this:

Michael Tein of Lewis Tein in Coconut Grove, Fla., is also looking to target third parties.

"We're going to be as aggressive as possible in pursuing third-party liability to the extent that we can," said Tein. Tein and his partner, Guy Lewis, are representing investors from South American and Manhattan who had invested $20 million with Madoff, including one client who invested $11.5 million. He declined to name the clients.

"I am very pessimistic about the ability to recover the investment itself," Tein said. "But the fraud is too big for there not to be a problem with banks, brokerage houses, clearinghouses and third party fiduciaries. It's not as if this gentleman kept all his money in-house."

And if he did, sue the maid!

Pretty soon it will be impossible to bump into anyone in this town who is not on one side or another of this thing.

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on December 16, 2008 (boomark / email).