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275 Round Hill Road

275 Round Hill Road has returned to the market at $5.575 million after a year lying fallow. This is a 1726 house, sort of, last remodelled in 2004. Owners paid $4.7 for it in 1999 and asked $8.4 million in 2008. That didn’t work as expected during the ensuing years that saw five price cuts and almost as many brokers, and it finally expired at the end of 2011 at a price of $5.995. And as noted, now it’s back at $5.575.

Might work – certainly a good location and the house retains much of its beauty, but lovers of old Round Hill Road houses might want to see what’s happening with Walter Noel’s place at 175 Round Hill. It’s rumored to be in the hopper, perhaps because, I was just surprised to learn, that the law suit brought by the town of Fairfield’s pension fund was withdrawn against Walter and his partner Tucker last August 16th. A quiet settlement, perhaps? Whatever’s going on, it seems that the Noels are getting ready to shake the mud off their golf spikes and vamoose.

Oh, where will they stay? Where WILL they stay?

 

Under new ownership

Walt and Monica clear out of Palm Beach. $6.6 million – after purchase cost ($4.4) plus renovations and transaction costs they maybe will net just a million or so, but that’s a far better return on their 2006 investment than any of Walt’s customers got.

With the old dump on Round Hill Road also seemingly headed for new ownership – creditor or buyer is unknown, so far – and the Mustique villa rumored to be going, that will leave the crooks just a few properties left in which to hide out. Of course there’s always son-in-law Andre’s yacht to escape on.

I don’t have the answer, but here’s the question

From Madoffwatch London:

Dear Christopher Fountain,

Every now and again you post a little something about these appalling villains who continue to escape any kind of scrutiny by the mainstream US media, despite, as far as I am aware, not having faked their own deaths (like Jeffry Picower.)

How do they manage it?  Is nobody interested any more? In the fall of last year I noticed that there had been a derisory “settlement” of $84 million or so …..in respect of the $7 billion or so ….of their investors’ funds that they had egregiously pissed away in the Madoff Ponzi scheme.

Picard sued them all over 2 years ago but I am not aware of any progress in that case – to some extent understandable while the Trustee is concentrating his fire on those with “deeper pockets”… such as the banks…etc.  I saw also that Picard was seeking seeking to block the settlement between FG & its investors.

But surely there must be some traceable assets representing some at least of the fees etc collected by FG for their celebrated “due diligence”. Hoping you have some information about the current state of play.

Where in the World are Walt Noel’s daughters? Here’s one of them, freshly removed from Nodding Hill to Parsons Green and shy a bedroom

FWIW spies are everywhere: Here’s the latest from a Craig’s List – type bulletin board in England, wherein Ariane Noel Sodi seeks domestic help.

We are a brazilian/italian/ american family looking for full time, mainly a live in housekeeper.
I have posted ads in the past and have found competent part time help, and have tried many combinations of shifts of hours during the week/two people part time, and i have not been satisfied with the results. I would like one person who is responsible for the house, deep cleaning, laundry and ironing, polishing silver, cooking, shopping, keeping outdoor space tidy, watering plants (as needed i can fill gaps with part time help). So far the day has seemed too long for live out. We have five children, but two girls at boarding school. If i find the right person, my idea is to have someone live in my daughters room who is away 90 percent of the time. When she is back from school for a weekend, i was hoping the person i found had a place to go … as well as during the persons time off. 
Hours etc, can be discussed over an interview.
I would like someone energetic who likes family life, is willing to learn, takes the initiative, has had housekeeping and cooking experience.
If interested, please email.
Please let me know nationality, languages spoken, age, and housekeeping/cooking experience by email.
Thank you,
Kind regards, Ariane Sodi

Where’s Walter?

Walter’s Playhouse

The media has lost track of Walter Noel this summer and I can’t find him. Is he summering in Southampton? Anyone know?

And can you figure out how he’s allowed to stay in his beach cottage (last rented out, summer of 2009, for $375,000 per month) when he’s on the hook for a couple of billions of dollars? And how, four years on, is he still free?

Just asking.

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noellll?

"Everything I am today I owe to Bernie" (actual quote, July, 2008)

Where’s Walto? No, not our Walt but the Round Hill Road guy with all that money. I’ve heard complaints from his neighbors that nothing has changed at the Noel residence. The expensive cars still come and go, parties are held (who would attend such an affair except from morbid curiosity?) and Monica hasn’t conducted a single tag sale.

So, Mustique for Christmas? Vail? Inquiring minds want to know.

Madoff trustee begins Round II : clawback suits against Noel’s clients

“Invested” with Walter Noel? Brace yourself, Bridgett, Picard is coming after you. Walt’s friends at the Round Hill Club are going to be really pissed.

Walt Noel dodges a bullet

Appellate court tosses out the town of Fairfield’s suit against him. It was a bullshit claim to begin with – Fairfield never invested through Noel’s firm, they just said that Noel helped the fraud which he did, of course, but that doesn’t make him liable for Fairfield’s loss.

Plenty of other suits out there that allege direct losses caused by Walt to keep the old man entertained through his dotage.

Bad news for Walter Noel and his suckers

Judge rules that clients of feeder funds aren’t entitled to repayment from Madoff recovery. Some direct Madoff investors are on target to get at least 75% of their money back but people who entrusted their money to Noel’s Fairfield Greenwich Group will get bupkis. Unfortunately for them, Walt’s Round Hill home is worth, at best, maybe $3 million – that’s not going to do it, so look for continued pressure on the girls to also give up their illicit gains (if there’s anything left – the ladies are doing their best to spend it as fast as they can).

Walter Noel is still on the hook

Madoff Trustee, Fairfield Group liquidator agree on settlement. That might at first blush sound like good news for our Round Hill resident but then there’s this:

The settlement allows the liquidators of the Fairfield funds to work together with Picard to purse [sic] assets from the former owners and managers of the Fairfield funds, David Sheehan, the Madoff trustee’s chief counsel, said in Picard’s statement.

I think Walt’s going to have a troubled retirement.

Poor ol’ Walt may (or may not) be under the weather with terminal cancer, but it’s not slowing down Marissa Noel from enjoying spending stolen loot

Horse Jock sends along this inspiring picture of the rich bitch having a grand time with other folks’ money.

Walter Noel

This is not news I want to hear- it’s fun to pick on crooks, of course, but I really don’t wish ill on anyone, even a fool like Walt.

Submitted on 2011/04/01 at 6:21 pm

Inside sources have told my uncle that Mr. Noel was admitted last week at a NYC hospital and was found to have terminal cancer of the pancreas and has lost considerable weight, inoperable, and he is depressed and refusing everything except palliative care so he is going to a hospice. Sad story. Please do not kick this horse while he’s down

Psst! Wanna buy a baseball team?

Met’s owners strike out in Madoff court, and don’t get to count their “profits”.  Look for a sale of the team, soon, because the Wilpons have no money. I’d say this judge got it right:

Dennis Jacobs, one of three judges hearing the case at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, questioned whether a court-appointed trustee should be expected to make payouts based “on whatever amount Madoff made up while chewing on his pencil and looking at the ceiling.“

This ruling isn’t going to help Walter Noel with his own “we were victims too” argument.

UPDATE: I misread the article. As this WSJ makes clear, today’s hearing did not yield a ruling. But if the judges’ comments are indicative, the Wilpons shouldn’t hold out much hope.

Madoff: Walt knew damn well what I was up to!

Well no, he didn’t exactly say that but in his first interview since the great bust, given to the NYT, he speaks of the complicity of his hedge fund investors and their “willful blindness”. “They had to know.”

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I got mine, Jack, so screw you!

Walter Noel’s “Greenwich Sentry” Madoff feeder fund goes bust. Actually, I thought the old fart filed for bankruptcy two years ago, but I guess not. Nice to see that, having enriched himself at the Madoff trough for twenty years, Walter is insisting that his defrauded friends pry back the lucre from his cold, stiff fingers. It’s a strategy that will probably work, because Noel’s an old man, and his lawyers can surely keep his avenging victims off his back until he shuffles off this mortal coil. Nice if he’d do the right thing, but that ain’t gonna happen. I love this bit:

The investment partnerships used a form of “non-traditional options trading” implemented by Madoff, [Sentry lawyer] McKeefry said.

I dunno, it seems to me that a Ponzi scheme is a very traditional form of trading, one that quickly separates suckers from their money. Walt must see things different.

Has Bernie Madoff really stashed away $9 billion?

So says a fellow inmate, and if you can’t trust a con then who can you believe? Supposedly, friends are hiding it for him and if so, I might want to make a late night visit to the Noel household on Round Hill Road and do some digging in the flower garden. But I wonder how much good even $9 billion will do a person after 150 years.

No wonder Monica Noel is away

Reader IL sends along this arbitration award: $1.8 million against a Madoff feeder fund. Not Walter’s and his Fairfield Greenwich Group, but same cause of action, same facts. The old homestead on Round Hill Road draws closer to the auction block.

May 17 (Bloomberg) — An investor in J. Ezra Merkin’s Ascot Partners LP, a feeder fund for Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, was awarded $1.75 million by arbitrators who found Merkin intentionally breached his fiduciary duty by not disclosing Madoff’s role in the fund, according to a court filing.

Merkin also was negligent in performing due diligence on Madoff, a majority of an arbitration panel found, according to a petition filed today in New York state court. Investor Noel Wiederhorn, who put $1.46 million into Ascot Partners in 2003 and 2004, is seeking a judgment confirming the award, which was for the amount he invested plus interest.

Wiederhorn, a Wycoff, New Jersey, pediatrician, also asked that the sealed record of the arbitration case be made public.

“These findings could have significance in later litigation and arbitrations against Mr. Merkin as well as against numerous other Madoff feeder-fund managers,” Weiderhorn’s attorney, David Bamberger, wrote in asking for the record to be unsealed.

The evidence showed “major contradictions and ambiguities” in transaction confirmations, which should have caused Merkin to question the Madoff trades, according to his filing. The evidence in the hearing also established the “extreme improbability” of the transactions Madoff reported in the over-the-counter options market, the papers said.

Walt Noel isn’t sorry and if you lost money with him well, too bad.

A reader transplanted down south sends this delightful link to Noel’s latest attempt to skirt responsibility for screwing all of you:

Last year, as the Madoff litigation landscape was beginning to take shape, burned investors homed in on the so-called “feeder funds” that funneled billions to Bernard Madoff’s investment fund. Chief among the targets: funds managed by Fairfield Greenwich. In April, a trio of plaintiffs firms–Boies, Schiller & Flexner, Wolf Popper, and Lovell Stewart Halebian–filed an amended complaint in Manhattan federal district court, accusing Fairfield and its cofounders, Walter Noel, Jr., Jeffrey Tucker, and Andrés Piedrahita, of committing fraud by passing along $7 billion of their investors’ money to Madoff.

Two days before Christmas, the defendants–many of them represented by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett–answered the allegations with two motions to dismiss the plaintiffs’ complaint. The defense briefs and underlying affidavits and exhibits are here and here.

Fairfield Greenwich’s principal argument seems to be that the Fairfield defendants were also duped by Madoff and that they, too, lost money. “It is understandable that investors are exploring all possible avenues to recover their losses,” attorneys for the Greenwich defendants wrote. “But this defectively framed and pled action, which seeks to hold the FG defendants responsible for losses caused by a fraud they neither participated in nor had knowledge of–and that thousands of others, including investors, intermediaries, advisors, banks, auditors, and regulators failed to uncover–is not the proper means to achieve that goal.”

In addition, the defendants list a variety of technical shortcomings in the amended complaint, claiming, for example, that plaintiffs lack standing for some claims and fail to meet pleading requirements for others. The defendants are hoping Judge Victor Marrero not only dismisses the case, but also declines to give the plaintiffs an opportunity to re-plead.

When, a year ago, I began pounding on Noel for his negligence and rapacious soul, I heard from several of his Greenwich friends, all angry that I was picking on such a fine man. As the extent of his profiteering – hundreds of millions of dollars a year – became public, those complaints ceased. He may still have friends in town, but not as many, surely.

Wonder why you keep tripping over Walter Noel at the RHC this season?

CityFile

Wonder no more. Page Six reports that he’s rented out Villa Mustique to Bill Gates and may be selling it. Walt and Monica have nowhere else to go! Try not to show your annoyance at seeing them at your club -it’s temporary.

Walter Noel and his family haven’t been seen yet this winter in Mustique, where the Fairfield Greenwich fund king has a big estate. Noel, who lost $7 billion of his clients’ money to Bernie Madoff, usually makes a big splash on the private island with his wife and four [sic] daughters and their husbands, who worked for Noel around the world. But sources say this year he rented the place to Bill Gates, who was spotted with his wife and friends at Firefly, one of Mustique’s fanciest inns. “The rumor is that Gates loves it so much, he plans to buy it,” said one source.

Hmm. I assume that the same angry creditors who slapped liens on Walt’s Round Hill home must have found a way to do the same thing in Mustique, but surely Bill Gates’s lawyers can figure a way around that difficulty.

Perfect

Going once ...

Scam artists auctioning “Genuwyne Madoff art work” slapped upside the head by Blumenthal. “I checked with my  neighbor and good friend Walt,” Blumenthal told FWIW’s Scusie, “and he admitted to me that none of this crap ever hung on his pal Bernie’s walls. So he promised to stop doing it.”

 Phew! Another bunch of suckers saved from disappointment.

“It’s a scam within a scam,” said Philip Eliasoph, professor of art history at Fairfield University, who complained to Blumenthal’s office Thursday about the scheduled auctions. Eliasoph, who teaches about museums, auctions and the art market, said it’s a classic bait-and-switch tactic.

“The whole pretense is, it’s coming out of Uncle Bernie’s Montauk mansion,” said Eliasoph, a member of the state Commission on Culture and Tourism.

“People are so stupid,” he said. “This one in particular is egregious because they’re playing on the whole pretense of the Madoff fraud. It’s a fraud encrypted in a fraud. Most of what is being auctioned, if you showed up with it at the door of Christie’s or one of the other major auction houses, you wouldn’t even get in to see one of the specialists in modern or contemporary art.”