Talk about getting a kick in the assets.
The feds have filed court documents today seeking assets belonging to the wife of self-confessed Wall Street swindler Bernie Madoff.
View a Chart of Madoff’s Victims
Federal prosecutors said they will seek the $7 million Upper East Side penthouse as well as another $62 million that Ruth Madoff had sought to keep since her husband’s arrest last year.
Bernie Madoff, 70, pleaded guilty last week to 11 charges, including securities fraud and perjury, after admitting that he ran a $64 billion Ponzi scheme.
Madoff’s lawyers had indicated that they planned to claim Ruth Madoff was entitled to keep as much as $69 million in assets.
His lawyers have said the assets were not part of Madoff’s fraud and that they were in her name.
In today’s filing, the feds are seeking the “forfeiture of certain assets” – including a Cayman Islands company called Yacht Bull Corp., three boats valued at $10 million, $65,000 in silverware and a piano worth $39,000.
Ruth Madoff’s lawyer Peter Chavkin declined to comment on the government’s notice.
In court papers filed Friday, lawyers for Bernie Madoff argued for his release pending sentencing. A list of assets filed with the appeal put the net worth of Madoff and his wife between $823 million and $826 million
Following his guilty plea on Thursday, Madoff, who was denied bail and remanded, has been housed in a cell at the Metropolitan Correction Center in lower Manhattan.