Facts & figures
Kent Harris
Written by Gary A. Seidman
SwitchYard Media, Inc. - contact | website
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Tin Can Rocket, LLC. - contact | website
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Photo Credit: Robert Scoble
Elie Wiesel Foundation / Loss: $15.2 million
Ripping off an 80-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who survived the Holocaust and has devoted his life to philanthropic ventures -- now that takes chutzpah!
In a statement on the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Web site, Wiesel says the organization had $15.2 million invested with Bernard Madoff. "This represented substantially all of the Foundation's assets," according to the statement.
Wiesel said that since the Madoff scandal came to light, the foundation has been inundated with letters of support and individual contributions. "One young lady sent us $18 and said she'd send us more next year if she still has a job. We are so moved by that," Wiesel told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
More on the Madoff scandal: Madoff and me: 1 victim's story
Foundation: Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and along with his wife, Marion, established the foundation soon thereafter. On its Web site, the organization says its mission is "to combat indifference, intolerance and injustice through international dialogue and youth-focused programs that promote acceptance, understanding and equality."
Photo Credit: Lester Cohen, ImageNet
Kevin Bacon / Loss: Not disclosed
It's safe to say that Bernard Madoff is not on Kevin Bacon's "A Few Good Men" list. The actor's publicist confirmed in December that Bacon, who recently played an aide to Richard Nixon in "Frost/Nixon," had a substantial investment with Madoff. Bacon's relationship with crooks now transcends the silver screen.
Bacon and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, have not disclosed how much money they lost with Madoff or how they became involved with his investment firm. But Madoff's Hollywood connections definitely ran deep.
Another Madoff investor, Eric Roth, who penned the screenplay for this year's Oscar-nominated "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," told the Los Angeles Times, "I'm the biggest sucker who ever walked the face of the Earth." He added that "the real tragedy is the people who lost their life savings and their dreams."
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Bacon's films: The actor has been in 47 movies which together have grossed more than $1.4 billion.
Sedgwick on TV: She stars in TNT's "The Closer" and was a Screen Actors Guild nominee for outstanding performance in a dramatic series this year.
Photo Credit: Patrick Beek
Hedge funds / Loss: Billions of dollars
How ironic. The biggest financial brains were the biggest financial losers. Fairfield Greenwich Advisors, which still boasts on its Web site that its "due diligence process is deeper and broader than a typical Fund of Funds," lost an astounding $7.5 billion to Bernard Madoff.
Tremont Group, which is owned by OppenheimerFunds and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, lost $3.3 billion. Tremont's Web site says it employs "advanced risk allocation and time-tested portfolio management."
Among the other gold-standard investment firms that lost billions were Austria's Bank Medici ($2.1 billion), Ascot Partners ($1.8 billion) and Access International Advisors ($1.4 billion), whose co-founder Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet was found dead in his Manhattan office on Dec. 24, 2008, apparently having killed himself.
More on the Madoff scandal: Financial 'death penalty' for Madoff?
Fairfield Greenwich assets: As of November, the fund had $14.1 billion under management, a little over half of which was invested with Madoff.
Tremont assets: The firm had $5.8 billion under management before the scandal.
Photo Credit: Dan Farber
Jeffrey Katzenberg / Loss: About $20 million
"This is extremely painful and humiliating for me," Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation, told CNBC. "It has done extraordinary damage to my philanthropy."
Katzenberg said he had never even heard Bernard Madoff's name until December, "when I found out that, you know, he had swindled all this money."
The Los Angeles Times reported that Katzenberg's business manager, Gerald Breslauer, had handled the investment, which was estimated at $20 million.
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Philanthropy: The Marilyn & Jeffrey Katzenberg Foundation had assets of $22.1 million as of 2007 and had made $455,333 in donations, according to Bloomberg News.
Charitable causes: Jeffrey Katzenberg raised more than $1 million for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and has been a leading contributor to AIDS causes as well as to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, which assists members of the entertainment community with health and human services.
Photo Credit: Jessica Neal
Schools / Losses: Tens of millions of dollars
New York University, which said it lost $24 million, and Bard College, which lost $3 million, had entrusted their accounts to J. Ezra Merkin's investment funds, The Wall Street Journal reported. Merkin, a celebrated money manager, former chairman of GMAC and big-time philanthropist who was sometimes called "Ezra the Wise," is now the subject of several lawsuits.
The Journal reported that Merkin had delegated "substantially all" of his Ascot Partners' $1.8 billion, and about a quarter of the assets in the Ariel Fund and Gabriel Capital, to Bernard Madoff.
Other educational institutions tangled up with Merkin's funds include New York Law School ($3 million loss) and Yeshiva University, whose initial investment of $14.5 million with the Ariel Fund had reportedly ballooned to more than $100 million in 15 years.
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Other university losses: Tufts University lost $20 million; the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology lost $6.5 million.
Other education losses: The Korea Teachers Pension Fund, $9 million; New York's Ramaz School, $6 million; Boston's Maimonides School, $3 million to $5 million.
Photo Credit: Dept. of Defense
Steven Spielberg / Loss: Not disclosed
Gerald Breslauer, a well-known and highly respected money manager in Hollywood, connected director Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation and DreamWorks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg's charitable endeavors to Bernard Madoff.
Spielberg’s Wunderkinder, with assets of $73.3 million listed in its 2007 tax return, reported income of $126,093 from B. Madoff Investment Securities.
The amount of the subsequent loss to the foundation, which makes grants and donations to organizations including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and the International Rescue Committee, is not known. Breslauer served as president of Wunderkinder and managed the foundation’s finances.
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Philanthropy: Spielberg is active with many causes, founding the Righteous Persons Foundation, which supports the U.S. Jewish community, and aiding the Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation, which helps improve the lives of ill children through technology.
Wealth: Forbes has estimated Spielberg's wealth at $3 billion.
Photo Credit: GNU Free Documentation
Banco Santander / Loss: $3.1 billion
Spain's Banco Santander, Europe's second-largest bank, holds the unenviable distinction of taking the biggest loss of any commercial bank in the Bernard Madoff scandal.
Ironically, Santander had largely steered clear of toxic financial instruments that were at the center of 2008's most profound financial turbulence. "If you don't fully understand an instrument, don't buy it," Santander's chairman, Emilio Botín, counseled other bankers last summer.
Investigators in Spain reportedly are now looking into the links between Santander and Madoff, and are particularly interested in why Botín had sent one of his executives to visit Madoff in New York just weeks before the Ponzi scheme unraveled.
More on the Madoff scandal: Who got bilked in $50 billion scheme?
Core losses: Santander's losses stem from its Optimal Strategic U.S. Equity Fund, an arm of the bank based in Ireland.
Lawsuits: In January, investors sued Santander in U.S. district court, saying the bank's due diligence was inadequate.
Photo Credit: koka_sexton
Olympic Committee / Loss: $4.8 million
In late December, Richard Carrion, the finance committee chairman of the International Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press that the organization had about $4.8 million invested with Bernard Madoff. "It's a little over 1%25 of the money in the portfolio," Carrion said.
According to the AP, Carrion had told an IOC meeting in mid-December that overall market volatility -- fluctuations in stock prices and the dollar's value -- had been more detrimental to the committee's finances than the Madoff scandal.
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Olympic Committee: The committee is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Revenue: The IOC generates revenue through broadcast partnerships, sponsorships, ticketing and licensing arrangements.
Photo Credit: Rita Monar
Uma Thurman's fiancé / Loss: $230 million
One can only imagine how Beatrix "Black Mamba" Kiddo would dispense with Bernard Madoff if they were to meet on a Manhattan street.
Actress Uma Thurman, who played the sword-wielding star of "Kill Bill," became engaged to superstar hedge fund manager Arpad Busson in June, well before Madoff became the scourge of the rich and famous.
Busson's European fund, EIM, had about $11 billion in assets and was reportedly on the hook for about $230 million due to its Madoff exposures. True, EIM is hardly in the same boat as Fairfield Greenwich Advisors or Tremont Group, but EIM's Web site does boast that it is "ideally situated to deliver solid performances whilst maintaining well defined risk parameters."
More on the Madoff scandal: Victim: Madoff took all my money
EIM: The hedge fund was founded by Busson in 1992. It has offices in nine countries.
EIM clients: 95%25 are institutional, mostly financial and insurance companies, and pension funds.
Photo Credit: AnalogKid203
Fairfield, Conn. / Loss: $41.9 million
Fairfield County, Conn., an upscale area north of New York City, sports some of the country's most affluent communities, including Greenwich, New Canaan and Wilton. It's no wonder the area is home to many Wall Street executives and is headquarters of several hedge funds and financial-services companies.
But it wasn't just Fairfield County's ultrarich who were burned by Bernard Madoff. The fiscal officer for the town of Fairfield told The Wall Street Journal that pension funds covering 971 town employees, including police officers and firefighters, had lost $41.9 million invested with Madoff.
Another Fairfield business, the Orthopaedic Specialty Group, which has 130 doctors and other staff members, told the Connecticut Post that it had invested all of its retirement fund with Madoff. "For some of us, it's an entire career's worth of work," Dr. Robert Dawe told the newspaper.
More on the Madoff scandal: Talk back: How do you feel about Madoff's victims?
Population: 61,716.
Median household income: $103,352.
Mean household income: $153,077
High-income households: 22.5%25 earn $200,000 or more.
Median home value: $631,800.
Million-dollar homes: 16.6%25.