Ponzi Perps on Parade

There is small comfort to be taken from our national economic pickle. But at least we have the spectacle of the deluxe perp walk. There’s been a pleasing parade of millionaire scam artists receiving the curious benediction of big working-class mitts cupping their distinguished skulls, as detectives push them into the back seats of police cars.

Then they’re released sporting ankle bracelets in a matter of hours on ten million dollars( in other people’s money) bail, and head home to their 27 million dollar (in other people’s money) South Hampton compounds, but it’s something, anyway. They at least stand a chance of serving time, if only because they ripped off the rich.

Here are Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh. They were half of the Gang of Four who ran the New York Islanders hockey team into the ground in the eighties. Since then, they’ve plundered over half a billion from charities and universities (sorry, Pittsburgh! They seem to have concentrated on dimming your cultural lights in particular).

They blew the dough on horse farms (Paul Newman’s and Joanne Woodward’s North Salem spread, with ironic foreshadowy stone pig statues on either side of the driveway) , rare books, houses for ex-wives, and, almost loveably, fine and rare antique mohair teddy bears.

Even more loveably, they both showed up for court wearing cashmere V-necks. As if daring posterity to laugh. And I’m sure that if posterity weren’t on a respirator, posterity would.

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 03/01/09 at 12:13 AM • Permalink

Categories: I Don't Know Much About Art, But I Know What I Like •

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They at least stand a chance of serving time, if only because they ripped off the rich.

Yep. I told the S.O. over a year ago that once these creeps started feeding on each other (or could no longer conceal that they’d been doing so all along) we’d be treated to perp walks such as this one.

Greenwood is a longtime horseman who raises ponies on a 300-acre farm in North Salem, Westchester County, which he bought from Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward for $2.1 million in 1984.

He was going to export them to Iraq but Bush made the mistake of paying in advance.

Comment by Hunger Tallest Palin on 03/01/09 at 12:58 AM

Wow, this stuff just keeps coming. I’m not sure which amazes me more - the utter cynicism combined with greed of the crooks or the total naivete combined with greed of the investors.

Comment by marindenver on 03/01/09 at 12:37 PM

When the big bubble bursts, all the littler bubbles start popping. Everybody runs at once to withdraw their money, and all the scams are exposed. Bernie Madoff was like the starting gun.

Did you see that Elie Weisel was ruined by Madoff? And his foundation too. There’s a benefit concert coming up for the Weisel foundation, and a new book coming out, but right now they have nothing.

Comment by Mrs. Polly on 03/01/09 at 12:39 PM

I look forward to your artist’s renderings of the perp-walks of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales, et al. You could probably publish a book of them.

Comment by Allan on 03/01/09 at 06:59 PM

Did you see that Elie Weisel was ruined by Madoff? And his foundation too.

I think that’s awful. But Madoff claimed to be running a hedge fund. Hedge funds are by definition highly risky forms of investment. Hedge fund managers work against the market trends and make money (or lose it) by day trading and short sales. Both of these are legal forms of gambling. Nobody should ever invest money in a hedge fund that they can’t afford to lose. Of course I guess these days anything invested in the stock market is like gambling, but traditionally the hedge fund would only be for money that could be played with.

Obviously in Madoff’s case the Ponzi scheme is the worst form of “investment” at all and nobody realized that they were being actually swindled but even so, to not have used caution about investing in what was billed as a hedge fund, was very unwise.

Comment by marindenver on 03/01/09 at 09:41 PM

I look forward to your artist’s renderings of the perp-walks of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales, et al.

Oh, so do I. That day can’t come too soon.

Comment by marindenver on 03/01/09 at 09:43 PM

Mar, Weisel says he was pointed to Madoff by people with real financial savvy, but many people didn’t know their money was given to Madoff; the Times had a story about a woman who thought her money was in a Securities firm, but actually the firm was just a shell for an unscrupulous and lazy broker who simply sent all the funds straight to Madoff.

The human follies on display in this crisis are right out of Dickens and Thackeray. And Moliere. Weisel was, like many others, drawn in by the rarified company Madoff supposedly was keeping. The way Madoff exploited people’s love of exclusivity shows he knows characters as well as any novelist.

Comment by Mrs. Polly on 03/01/09 at 10:51 PM

Very true. He was the consummate con artist. The sad thing is that so many people who get conned still love the con artist long after they know he has robbed them.

A man named Will Hoover was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme in Denver a couple of years ago. This guy actually, on the witness stand, joked to the jurors about how, when clients asked if their money was safe, he would respond that it was in the bank. It was, he told the court, a little joke of his, that the money was in The Bank of Will Hoover. This guy actually jeered at his victims in court and yet people still defend him as being “misunderstood” or something. Amazing.

Comment by marindenver on 03/02/09 at 01:18 AM

Will Hoover’s family and friends were all over the comments on that page, claiming it was just a “paper crime”. The old people he scammed were comforted by that as they were escorted out of their houses, I’m sure.

He got a 100-year sentence: 4 for every victim. So a lot of the comments ran “WHERE IS THE JUSTICE! Do you feel safe when murderers get out of jail and first time offenders, etc. etc.”

He appealed his sentence using this rationale, and the judge cut his sentence to 50 years. Hoover was 56 at the time.