With the public's attention having been exclusively focused on Bernie, his sons Marc and Andrew, and Bernie's "
three-man accountant company" lead by David Friehling, a question that is intriguing more and more people is who/what/where are Frank DiPascali, the 51 year old CFO of Bernard L Madoff, and Charles Wiener, Bernie's 50 year old nephew, listed as Director of Administration, who were the only other tenants on floor 17 of 885 Third Avenue.
According to his
Brokercheck profile, Frank is still currently registered at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, CRD# 1527021, he is in fact "Jr", there have been no disclosures or suspensions filed against him (unlike his boss, whose crib sheet is quite prolific). Like a diligent schoolboy, Frank passed his Series 7 on June 21, 1986. Frank has been employed by Bernie since September 1975, over 33 years, meaning he joined when he was 18. On December 23,
WSJ profiled DiPascali, who is represented by attorney
Mark Mukasey, a high profile trial lawyer from Bracewell Giulianni. While DiPascali was quoted as saying that he "would like to see investors get back whatever they can", an SEC memo claimed that Frank has "responded evasively" to questioning after the regulators showed up at the 17th floor of the Lipstick building.
Frank is
married to Joanne DiPascali of Howard Beach who is an employee of JP MorganChase National Association, the private banking arm of JPM.
As noted here, Joanne works out of JPM's Iselin NJ office, which is where the firm's mortgage business is centered.
In this March 29, 2006 memo, the Iselin office provided its 2 cents on just how smoothly the Nontraditional Mortgage Product market is operating. As seen in the following representative
prospectus from a 2007 mortgage pool offering by that office, of the $473 million mortgage pool peddled probably by Mrs. DiPascali among others, only $181 million of mortgages had verification checks, $440 million are IOs and average outstanding balance is $476,000...So plot thickens - husband is chief financial officer to a ponzi as wife is potentially selling worthless mortgage pools... DiPascalis now live in
Bridgewater, NJ, in what seems like a
pretty decent house. In his spare time, Frank enjoys marlin fishing on his boat
Dorothy-Jo, and he is actually quite good - he participated in the
2008 Mid-Atlantic $500,000 Marlin Fishing Tournament. Not only is fishing a hobby, but it seems to also be a family business (and who knows, maybe a money-laundering operation): since 2002 the couple has been running
Dorothy-Jo Sportfishing, which according to manta.com has annual sales of over $230,000...
How about the other tenant of the 17th floor, Charles Wiener, Bernie's sister son. Charlie is registered broker, CRD# 1329906, with no publicly filed adverse disclosures. Charlie passed his Series 7 on 9/21/1985. He has been employed at Madoff securities since May, 1980 - 28 years. Charlie is married to Carolyn B. Wiener, a lawyer.
Charles and Carolyn live in Centerport, NY.
Carolyn is the Wiener (no pun) in Schaum and Wiener, of 600 Old Country Road in Garden City, NY. Co-founder Martin Schaum himself was in the brokerage business under the name
Good-Rate Brokerage Ltd. As noted, Charlie's mother is Sondra Wiener, 74, who lives in the
Ballenisles Country Club, a gated Palm Beach Enclave where annual membership costs $35,000-$115,000, and is a stone-throw away from Jupiter Island. Sondra and her husband, Marvin, are neighbors to such celebrities as Serena and Venus Williams.
The NY Post recently noted that Bernie scammed even his own sister, and Charlie's mother, to the tune of an estimated $3 million. Sondra was one of the recipients of a Christmas goody bag that was sent under the nose of his overseers, which included $1 million in valuables including Cartier and Tiffany watches. These were promptly recollected by lawyers. On December 19, a week after Bernie's confession, Marvin and Sondra put their
3 bedroom, 2 garage,
3,409 sq. foot home on the market with an
asking price of $849,000 (any buyers can call
Sandy Pitchford at PalmBeachGardens.com, at (561) 427-7262 - this home will easily have phenomenal goodwill (or badwill) appreciation in coming years). The home was purchased by the couple in 2003, the year it was built, for $650,000. A neighbor is quoted that Sondra "was a victim in this. It didn't seem like she saw it coming. What kind of person scams their own sister?" Or their mother, we would ask.
Which would be the case if you are Charlie, and if, indeed, you had insight into you uncle's Ponzi operation. If Charlie is found to be guilty of prior knowledge, one could say that his punishment should be even worse than Bernie's, as the latter at least tried to give his relatives and family members some last minute parting gifts. Robbing your own 70 year old mother of her life savings would be inexcusable... Of course this line of thought presumes that Sondra herself was completely innocent and did not know anything about Bernie's actions, which is also yet to be proven.
Maybe
we spoke too early when we said that Shrenker's life story shames Berney . If a high-level investigation into the Madoff octopus reveals so much shadiness that even
Mario Puzo would cackle contentedly, one can only imagine what will be revealed when the Feds and the SEC actually stop twiddling their thumbs and do their job for once.
We hope to continue with Part 2 of this investigation tomorrow as time permits
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