The Old Westbury residence of Bernard Madoff’s brother Peter, which was seized in January by the by United States Marshals, has been put on the market for $4.495 million, according to reports.
Peter Madoff, the chief compliance officer at his older brother’s firm responsible for one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history, pleaded guilty last year to crimes that included falsifying documents and lying to regulators, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The Madoffs were ordered to forfeit all family assets for government auction – including the gated mansion at 34 Pheasant Run, complete with a long, winding driveway and two-bedroom pool house – so proceeds could be divided between victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Madoff defrauded thousands of investors out of roughly $65 billion.
The Madoffs owned the Old Westbury house for more than 20 years, though their primary residences were in Manhattan. Peter Madoff’s two-bedroom apartment on Park Avenue has already been sold by U.S. Marshals for $4.6 million, as was Bernard Madoff’s Manhattan apartment, for $8 million.
“When dealing with a home this grandiose, the outside world can lose sight of where all these fine things come from,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Kevin Kamrowski told the New York Times in an e-mail. “Everything in this home was obtained on the backs of other people.”
According to the Times report on the sale of the estate, when the Marshals Service overtakes a property, the house is secured and the locks are changed, motion-sensing security systems and surveillance cameras are installed, contractors are hired for maintenance, and a local real estate agent is brought in to sell the property.
Every piece of the property not part of the house, the Times reported, is indexed, appraised and tagged for auction once the property is sold.
“This was staged with, believe it or not, my recommendations and the hard work of the U.S. Marshals office,” Shawn Elliot of Shawn Elliot Luxury Homes and Estates, the real estate brokerage brought in to sell the Madoff property, told the Times. “Every single book in here was actually taken off the shelf, tagged and numbered, and then put back.”
Interview requests made by Blank Slate Media to Shawn Elliot Luxury Homes and Estates, which also included a tour of the property, were unavailing, as the realtor cited the requirement of the government’s permission before commenting.
Elliot told the Times that potential buyers have been curious about the Madoffs, even though personal items that may remind them of the former resident have been removed.
“The less I know about a situation, for me, the better,” Elliot told the Times. “My job as the real estate broker on this is to get the victims as much money as humanly possible.”
Elliot said he has received offers on the property, but none had yet been accepted, the Times reported.
When the house is sold, the Times reported, proceeds will go toward a victims compensation fund administered by the Justice Department, which has so far recovered more than $2.3 billion for Madoff victims.
