Madoff Apologizes to Neighbors for the Ultimate Co-op Crime

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Madoff Apologizes to Neighbors for the Ultimate Co-op Crime


By SUSAN DOMINUS
Published: January 11, 2009
The world hasn’t yet heard from Bernard L. Madoff, but his neighbors have.

On Dec. 22, white envelopes, each marked with an individual apartment number on it in pencil, arrived in the foyers of his fellow co-op owners at 133 East 64th Street.

Mr. Madoff, whose alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme has given him so much to regret, was apparently overcome by guilt — about the general media scrum surrounding the lobby.

On Monday morning, a federal magistrate is expected to rule on the prosecution’s request that Mr. Madoff be removed from the penthouse apartment in his building and jailed immediately, given that he violated the terms of his bail by sending out pricey jewelry to relatives. But since Dec. 18, Mr. Madoff has been living under house arrest, attracting television crews, tourists and probably a few crazed enemies to the discreet Federal-style building right off Lexington Avenue.

The letter, printed out on simple white paper, with letterhead formatted by word processor, read as follows:

Dear neighbors,

Please accept my profound apologies for the terrible inconvenience that I have caused over the past weeks. Ruth and I appreciate the support we have received.

Best regards,

Bernard Madoff

Profound apologies? Inconvenience? For all its simplicity, given the scope of the accusations facing Mr. Madoff, that short, concise letter sounds like a missive from an alternate reality.

The note has a familiar, reasonable tone to it, as if the person who wrote it is still clinging to the belief that he’s basically a decent guy, a good neighbor and citizen who made a few bad decisions.

Mr. Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin (who declined to comment for this article), told the court that the watches and other jewelry that was shipped out of the apartment were mostly, to the Madoffs, of sentimental value.

Maybe Mr. Madoff, seeing himself in the exquisitely flattering light of self-regard, really did perceive that jewelry bestowal as the loving gesture of a family man in trouble, while many others see in that same act the criminal sleaziness of an unrepentant thief.

Mr. Madoff, the president of the board at 133 East 64th until he resigned a few days before sending that letter around, wasn’t known for sending personal notes to his fellow co-op owners (those who spoke requested anonymity, given how much unwanted attention the building has already received). It is possible that some residents didn’t even immediately recognize the man whom the press was painting as the most reviled in New York as someone who lived in their building.

An elegant prewar building with apartments starting at $5 million and an understated lobby (orchid, clubby leather chairs, doorman in vest and jacket), 133 East 64th isn’t the kind of place where residents get together in the lobby and nibble butter cookies at an annual holiday party, or run into each other in the laundry room and gripe about the high fees of the machines.

To the contrary, says one resident, you could live there for years and almost never run into, say, its most famous resident, NBC’s Matt Lauer, or any other neighbor, for that matter. The building has 2 penthouses and 11 floors. It’s laid out with two residences per floor; but since the front and back apartments each have their own elevator, the contact among residents can be minimal.

That same neighbor said she barely recognized Mr. Madoff in the paper, and had met him only once, years earlier, when she was interviewing with the board pending acceptance of her financial package. “I think I blocked it out,” she said.

Mr. Madoff, who endeared himself to so many, apparently did not always make a great impression on newcomers to the building, running a meeting that felt, on at least this occasion, adversarial and cold. “I left the meeting thinking, ‘I know that they’re supposed to be deciding whether they want us, but I’m not sure I want them,’ ” she said.

Some of Mr. Madoff’s success seems tied to his knack for making people feel unwanted, that they were being judged and found lacking — the projection of someone whose own books now look cooked to Cordon Bleu perfection, in the eyes of prosecutors.

The tenant, still smarting from the co-op board meeting years earlier, certainly would not count herself among the supporters in the building that Mr. Madoff, in his letter, implies that he had.

It’s unlikely that he garnered any support from another angry tenant, who argued that house arrest for someone like Mr. Madoff, a possible security risk, was highly inappropriate within a co-op building, especially one with young children.

That resident’s take: “Our fear is that someone with nothing to lose will come after Madoff. We thought the court should move him to his house in Montauk. Then if someone goes and wants to take him out with a handgun, that’s not my problem.”

The co-op board, according to someone familiar with the board, went so far as to look into the legal options for having him moved elsewhere. That issue — thanks to Mr. Madoff’s jewelry-sending spree — may be resolved for them on Monday morning.

So who in the building was offering Mr. Madoff that support he mentioned? Maybe no one did, and that line was just one more line.

Or maybe it was some of the building staff. The tenant who got off to a bad start with Mr. Madoff said that she had checked with the super to make sure that he had received his annual holiday bonus from the Madoff family. She said she was assured that it had been handled, and generously, before the news broke (the super, reached by phone, declined to comment).

Apparently, it wasn’t just friends to whom Mr. Madoff hoped to pass along some early bonuses — it was the hard-working staff in his building.

Everyone always said he was a mensch. In his mind, maybe he still is.

E-mail: susan.dominus@nytimes.com