Daily News owner and real-estate mogul Mort Zuckerman is one of the investors ripped off by swindler Bernard Madoff, it was reported today.
Zuckerman, who also owns US News & World Report, has “significant exposure” through a fund that invested virtually all of its assets with Madoff, The Wall Street Journal says, quoting a person familiar with his investments.
A Zuckerman spokesman did not comment to the Journal.
The Journal further reported that powerhouse movie director Steven Spielberg’s charity, Wunderkinder Foundation, also got burned, investing roughly 70 percent of its money with Madoff. A spokesman said he couldn’t comment on whether Spielberg had any of his own money invested.
Among the many Jewish charities that lost money in the scam was Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel’s Foundation for Humanity, according to the Journal.
And New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s family charity also took a bath, investing most of its $14 million trust with Madoff, his lawyer told The Record of Bergen County.
Meanwhile, more European banks revealed that billions of dollars they entrusted to Madoff may have vanished – and a second Jewish charity abruptly shut down after losing its entire endowment.
Spanish banking giant Grupo Santander SA, which recently purchased Sovereign, a big US bank, said it placed $3.1 billion of its private banking customers in Madoff’s care through its Optimal Strategic US Equity fund.
BNP Paribas in France said it had more than $350 million at risk. The private Swiss bank Reichmuth & Co. told its hedge-fund investors that $327 million of their money was invested with Madoff. European media also reported Union Bancaire Privi 1/2e of Switzerland may’ve lost $1 billion.
And a spokeswoman for the Royal Bank of Scotland confirmed it had invested with Madoff, but provided no figures.
Early today, Japan’s largest brokerage, Nomura Holdings, said it has lost about $306 million.
Also, the Chais Family Foundation, which donated about $12.5 million a year to Jewish causes in former Soviet states and Israel, closed its doors for good after losing everything with Madoff.
The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation in Salem, Mass., closed on Friday, after losing $8 million.
Madoff remained cloistered in his Upper East Side penthouse, a neighbor on E 64th Street said.
The neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said he saw the alleged con artist looking forlorn and puffing a cigar by his window at 3 a.m. yesterday. His wife, Ruth, came and cradled his head in her arms.
“No comment” was all son Andrew Madoff, the director of trading at his father’s Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, said outside his East 75th Street apartment. Andrew and his brother, Mark, turned in their dad after he’d confessed to them.
With Kaja Whitehouse, Wires