Those Closest To Madoff Got Burned Too Victims on same office floor

Those Closest To Madoff Got Burned Too
Liz Moyer, 02.06.09, 04:00 PM EST
Perhaps the biggest riddle in the Madoff case is how people on the same office floor got scammed.

While it's hard to understand how thousands of investors around the world could have been duped by fund manager Bernard Madoff, it is even more difficult to figure how it happened to people down the hall.

While lawmakers blame regulators for failing to pick up on the fraud, it's clear from court documents that dozens of opportunities were missed to catch it, even by those who were closest to the action. More than one dozen individuals or entities listed in a 162-page court document filed Wednesday had an address listed at Madoff's firm, Bernard Madoff Investment Securities.

For some of these individuals, the address was purely administrative. But not all. One, Noel Levine, had an office on the very floor the fraud was alleged to have been carried out. Levine's real estate investment company, Troon Management, has an address on the 17th floor of 885 Third Avenue in Manhattan. Bernard Madoff Investment Securities occupied the 17th through 19th floors of that building, and the investment advisory business (alleged Ponzi operation) Madoff himself ran was run on the 17th floor. Levine could not be reached for comment.

Levine and his wife, New York socialite Harriette Levine, are listed a half-dozen times as Madoff account holders, either through her interior design firm, their family foundation or Troon Management.

Levine is not as universally famous as some other big victims of the alleged swindle, but he is believed to have lost a substantial fortune. He and his wife travel in New York society and live in a posh Park Avenue apartment building that is also home to Oscar de la Renta. He used to run a company that made bathroom accessories before registering Troon Management in the early 1990s. He is also on the board of a 3-year-old-start up bank in Greenwich, Conn.