For Bernie Madoff, the bulls never shat. And no bull ever failed to float. We're speaking literally, of course. Figuratively, the bullshit was mountainous and doomed to sink him. But we learned this week that his Palm Beach mansion and Manhattan penthouse were festooned with bronze bulls and that in South Florida, he kept a few among his fleet of bullish boats. Given the swindler's role in American history, some of this loot probably belongs in the Smithsonian, but after the financial swath he carved among investors, I suppose it's more charitable to sell the stuff so that victims can at least get a fraction of a penny on their dollar.
Courtesy WPTV, here's a slideshow of Bernie's Palm Beach pad.
New York Magazine has posted a slideshow through which you can tour Bernie's penthouse -- a luxurious celebration of beige. The magazine also compiles a list of assets to be sold, estimating that they'll fetch just under $60 million. Or, if you'll pardon the sadism, roughly $64,940,000,000 less than he's estimated to have collected from investors.
I understand that U.S. marshals want to drive up the price of these ill-gotten goods for the investors' sake, but they're not very natural salesmen, and they should be careful about how their advertising efforts may inflict more trauma on the victims. Consider the creepy image that one marshal invoked for the 55-foot fishing boat called simply Bull.
At a National Liquidators marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the boat is in "impeccable condition, as if someone lovingly wiped it down each day," per a marshal.That sounds positively Gollum-esque. The sport yacht is in France, but you can see the Bull in the fourth photo on this Sun-Sentinel slideshow. Sorry, but if I had $2.2 million like they're asking for that boat, I'd spend it somewhere else.
