Madoff scam cuts business at Great Neck barbershop
Madoff scam cuts business at Great Neck barbershop
BY SOPHIA CHANG | sophia.chang@newsday.com
10:33 PM EST, February 7, 2009
Alone in a Great Neck barbershop yesterday afternoon, Bennie Caracciolo swept the floor and tidied his shears.
Lately, business at the Elegant Men's Hairstyles had been bad, he acknowledged.
It didn't help that the employer of many of his clients, nearby Sterling Equities, had lost untold amounts of money to Bernard Madoff, the investor now accused of defrauding his clients in a $50-billion Ponzi scheme.
The company, which owns the New York Mets and the Brooklyn Cyclones, along with real estate and venture capital firms, has its Long Island offices at 111 Great Neck Rd., close to the village's train station.
"They're still coming in here," he said of his Sterling Equities customers. "Maybe not every two weeks -- maybe they're coming in every three or four weeks."
While local merchants bemoaned the lack of business, some could not pinpoint the cause beyond the ailing economy or the cyclical nature of consumer habits.
"It's hard to tell because these two months, January and February, are always slow, so I cannot tell if it's specific to one cause," said Alex Davidoff, owner of Great Neck Plaza Dry Cleaners. "But I notice a lot of customers are cutting back."
As she was getting her hair done at Cion & Co. salon near Sterling Equities, real estate professional Trudy Elliott said she heard from other agents that many Great Neck families had taken a hit from investing with Madoff.
"A lot of people from Great Neck were affected. They're selling their houses. They have to," she said. "They have $2- to $3-million houses that they can't afford."
Frank Cione, the owner of the salon, said he was determined to do his best for his clients.
"We have to keep women and men looking beautiful and handsome," he said.
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