Mets Are Prominent on the Madoff List, but Say They’re Fine

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Mets Are Prominent on the Madoff List, but Say They’re Fine

By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: February 5, 2009
The Mets said Thursday that despite the prominence of the principal owner, Fred Wilpon, his family and his businesses on a 162-page list of the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s suspected $50 billion Ponzi scheme, the team remains financially sound.

“As we have said before on numerous occasions, this does not and will not affect the day-to-day operations and long-term plans of the Mets’ organization and the Citi Field project,” the team said in a statement.

Thirteen Mets accounts, some with Shea Stadium addresses, are among several hundred listed in the names of the Wilpons, the family of Fred Wilpon’s brother-in-law and partner Saul Katz, and their company, Sterling Equities. The names of thousands of Madoff investors were released late Wednesday by the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

The accounts include Mets Limited Partnership, For the Account of Sterling Mets-LP, New York Mets Foundation and Sterling Doubleday, the team’s former corporate name when its ownership was shared by Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday.

No dollar figures were cited, so it is impossible to determine how much the team alone lost or what those accounts were earmarked for. There is also no way of knowing which accounts are active and which have been closed.

The list includes an account for Sandy Koufax, the Hall of Fame pitcher for the Dodgers and a high school friend of Wilpon’s. Koufax’s agent, Harlan Werner, said he had not spoken to Koufax and had no comment. Koufax makes regular visits to the Mets’ spring training complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

Another friend of Wilpon’s, Larry King, the CNN talk-show host, holds an account through a revocable trust.

A former Met, Tim Teufel, and his wife, Valerie, have six accounts. Teufel manages the St. Lucie Mets minor league team. The Brooklyn Cyclones, another Mets’ farm team, are on the list through Brooklyn Baseball and Coney Island Baseball.

The Mets have not been acting like a team in financial distress. Before Madoff’s arrest in December, the team signed reliever Francisco Rodríguez to a three-year, $37 million contract, and this week re-signed starter Oliver Pérez to a three-year, $36 million deal. The Mets also added the $5.3 million salary of reliever J. J. Putz in a trade.

The Mets had baseball’s second-highest payroll last year at $137.8 million, and it will be slightly higher this season, their first at Citi Field. The Mets have so far resisted talk-radio clamor to sign Manny Ramírez for a few years at $20 million or more a season, which may be less a sign of fiscal prudence than of concern about his age and attitude.

“Nothing we’ve been told tells us there will be any impact on the franchise,” said Bob DuPuy, the president and chief operating officer of Major League Baseball. DuPuy and Commissioner Bud Selig have spoken to Wilpon and his son, Jeff, the team’s chief operating officer, several times and are comfortable with the team’s finances.

“Their signings in the off-season and their moving forward, as they were going to, with the new ballpark is further evidence that their situation is good,” DuPuy said.

Teams supply M.L.B. with quarterly reports that detail revenues, debt, expenses, deferred compensation, business projections and changes to their finances. But owners are not required to provide information about financial changes to unrelated businesses like the Wilpons’ real estate, investment and private equity operations. So the team does not have to show the books of Sterling Equities as further proof of its financial health.

In explaining why the Mets will not be affected by family or corporate loses caused by Madoff, Jeff Wilpon said in December, “Just because you guys don’t know how much money we have, we have other money from outside of this, from diversity.”

Jeff Wilpon has been a close friend of one of Madoff’s sons, Mark, for 30 years.

The Madoff list shows that five other Mets partners/directors besides Fred and Jeff Wilpon and Katz were clients. The group includes Richard Wilpon, Fred’s brother; David Katz, Saul’s son; Tom Osterman; and Arthur Friedman. Each is also an executive of Sterling Equities. Marvin Tepper, a team partner and Sterling official, is another client.

Fred and Jeff Wilpon’s wives, Judy and Valerie, are also on the Madoff list, along with Fred and Judy’s daughter, Robin; her husband, Philip Wachtler; and her father-in-law, Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

The Wilpon family trust and family foundation were also cited as investors.