NEW YORK (AP) — A judge is allowing a lawsuit to proceed in limited form against the owners of the New York Mets by the trustee recovering money for investors who lost money to jailed financier Bernard Madoff.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said Tuesday the lawsuit brought by Trustee Irving Picard can seek to recover up to $295 million in profits that were paid out to the Mets’ owners during the multi-decade fraud. But he says Picard gain that sum only by proving the Mets’ owners were “willfully blind” to the fraud.
Rakoff says Picard’s claim otherwise would be limited to $83.3 million, the fictitious profits accumulated by the Mets’ owners in the two years before the fraud was revealed.
