NY Mets Owners: Wilpons & Saul Katz to Pay 83 MILLION For Madoff Scandal

Show Me The Money

– via Sporting News –
A federal judge in New York has ruled that the owners of the New York Mets owe up to $83 million to the trustee recovering money for investors defrauded by Bernard Madoff.

Federal Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan ruled Monday that there will still be a trial, scheduled to begin March 19, on whether additional money is owed. But he expressed doubt that the Mets would owe more.

Rakoff already had limited what the team’s owners might have to pay to other Madoff investors to $386 million. The trustee had sought $1 billion.

The trustee previously sued Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, saying they had to know Madoff was acting illegally. The owners’ lawyers say that wasn’t true.
Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence for his multibillion-dollar fraud relating to a Ponzi scheme.

The judge said he’ll decide in a future order exactly how much money is owed.

ESPNNewYork.com reported that of the $83 million or so the Mets now owe, only $1.7 million is from accounts related to the team. The rest is tied to other businesses and charities with Wilpon connections.

Wilpon told reporters last week that he and his family intend to keep the club for “a very long time.”

Meanwhile, it became clearer Sunday that the team faces other financial pressures.

Newsday published the annual statements of Queens Ballpark Company, the Mets’ subsidiary that leases Citi Field from the New York City Industrial Development Agency.

According to the statements, ticket revenue from the stadium’s most expensive 10,635 seats fell 21 percent last season to $50.6 million, and concession revenue dropped nearly 20 percent to $10.9 million.

Newsday’s report also showed how decline in attendance at Citi Field is having an impact: The team said it lost $70 million last season, after a $51 million loss in 2010. Before cutting player payroll for the 2012 season, the team borrowed $25 million from Major League Baseball and $40 million from Bank of America last fall. The team also owes hundreds of millions of dollars to banks.