Global General

Special

Newsmaker

Asia Pacific

America

Middle East

Europe

Africa

Alleged fraudster Madoff 'very charming'

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-18 07:54

Two weeks ago, Bernard Madoff stopped by the Everglades Barber Shop off Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida, for the usual: a $65 haircut, a $40 shave, a $50 pedicure and a $22 manicure.

"For me, he was a gentleman," said Senio Figliozzi, 72, the owner of the barber shop who has been cutting Madoff's hair for the past 17 winters. "What he did outside, it was news to me."

What Madoff did outside - running an alleged Ponzi scheme that may have bilked investors around the world out of $50 billion - has been the talk of Palm Beach this week. The arrested money manager owns a $21 million home on the Intracoastal Waterway about a mile from the Palm Beach Country Club. He was a regular at the club, where his 9.8 handicap this year has been as steady as the returns he promised investors.

It was those returns that lured Marilyn Lane, 72, and her husband, William, 81, into Madoff's orbit. The Lanes, who own an auto dealership in Manassas, Virginia, and a place in Palm Beach, invested more than $1 million with Madoff about six months ago.

"He certainly had a track record," Lane said. "Everyone you spoke to highly recommended him."

Many of those who gave their money to the 70-year-old Madoff say the same thing: He was gregarious, generous, and highly regarded - all excellent qualities for an alleged con man.

Whether they met him at the Palm Beach Country Club or in Montauk, Long Island, where he owned a beachfront home, or in New York, where he lived with his wife, Ruth, in a duplex on East 64th Street, most were impressed with his credentials and his manner.

At the Palm, a restaurant in New York, manager Tomas Romano says Madoff has been a regular for 20 years. He always insisted on a table in the front of the restaurant, Romano said, and was often surrounded by well-wishers. Many of the people listed as victims of Madoff's fraud, he noted, were also customers of the Palm.

"Even Spielberg," he said, referring to filmmaker Steven Spielberg, whose Wunderkinder Foundation had money invested in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.