Palm Beach Says Bye-Bye To Peter and Marion Madoff

SELLER: Peter and Marion Madoff
LOCATION: Palm Beach, FL
PRICE: $6,500,000
SIZE: 5,473 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The family of imprisoned former financier Bernie Madoff has been much in the news the last few weeks. On December 11th, exactly two years to the day of Daddy Madoff's arrest, his eldest son Mark hung himself with a dog's leash in his downtown New York City loft while his youngest child slumbered unknowingly in a nearby room. Word now comes slip sliding down the real estate gossip grapevine that Marion Madoff, the wife of Bernie's baby brother Peter, has put the couple's posh Palm Beach, FL pad up for sale with an asking price of $6,500,000.

Big, bad Bernie Madoff is, of course, serving a 150-year sentence in the slammer for his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands and left many destitute. A June 2010 article in New York Magazine about Bernie Madoff's life in prison reported that–are you sitting down for this one, ducklings–the Ponzi putz "boasts of his fraud" and said his only crime was to take money from people who were already wealthy, greedy and wanted more." He even doles out financial advice to the other inmates who include a mob boss or two and at least one international spy. Gawd. You're a real big macho man about the prison yard now, aren't you Mister Madoff? Impoverished wife, dead son, family members under criminal investigation and you're clinging to your delusional B.M.O.C. self-image? It's just pathetic.

Anyhoodles poodles, Mister Peter Madoff worked for his big brother Bernie since 1965 and at the time the shit went down in late 2008 he was employed as a senior managing director on the legal side of Madoff Securities. Yes, bunnies, there was actually a large and profitable arm of Bernie Boy's enterprise that was on the up and up. Mister Peter Madoff remains the subject of a criminal investigation in regards to some $200 million of Bernie Boy's ill-gotten gains that relatives (allegedly) received and this intense scrutiny by the Feds may or may not have anything to do with the real estate matter at hand.

Property records reveal that Mister and Missus Peter Madoff purchased their Palm Beach mini-estate in May of 2001 for $3,752,000. Based on the property records available, it does not appear to Your Mama that any mortgage was secured by the property at the time of the purchase. On the 8th of November in 2006 Mister Peter Madoff quitclaimed the Palm Beach property over to his wife Marion. This means, technically, legally, only Missus Marion Madoff is selling the Palm Beach property, Mister Peter Madoff having abdicated any ownership in 2006. Interestingly, but probably not surprisingly, at least some of the title and property records for Peter and Marion Madoff's mansion in Palm Beach link back the old Madoff offices at 885 Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

Listing information for the Peter Madoff's Palm Beach residence shows the single story mansard roofed manse comes in at 5,473 square feet while the Palm Beach Tax Man shows a considerably more sizable 7,373 square feet. Both listing and property records show 5 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers including a master suite that overlooks the gardens and contains dual terliting and bathing facilities.

A circular drive cuts twice through the row of tall trees trimmed topiary-style into fat lollipop-like cylinders and a second driveway stretches from the street back to a small motor court and three-car garage topped by additional living quarters of unspecified and unknown utility.

Interior spaces include an intimately-scaled paneled library with built-in bookshelves and a gleaming gold and honey-colored formal living room with dark wood accent pieces, simple but heavy moldings and a wood burning fireplace. The formal dining room is large enough to hold two six-top tables and a smaller adjacent room that overlooks the .48 acre grounds has yet another table for six. The crisp all-white kitchen looks recently redone with snow-white Shaker-style lower cabinets, glass-fronted uppers, very lightly-veined marble counter tops, de rigueur high-grade stainless steel appliances and a trio of wood and metal stools pulled up to an island breakfast counter.

A tented patio with natural fiber wall coverings and chunky dark wicker furniture spills out to a symmetrically stylish if rigidly landscaped side yard with more trees painstakingly trimmed topiary-style into lollipop shapes. The largest outdoor space is contained in a large courtyard bounded on two sides by the house and the other two sides by very high and meticulously squared hedges. A pergola that drips with what looks to Your Mama like gold-colored dahlias sits next to a long rectangular swimming pool sunk precisely on axis with the symmetrical facade of the house. A row of fountains that run up each side of the swimming pool look like there's a dozen minimum-wage men buried beneath the lawn who shoot out unending arches of urine into the air.

Lest anyone worry that ol' Petey Madoff and his Missus Marion might go homeless once they sell their winter hideaway in Palm Beach, y'all can relax. A peep and poke through public property records reveals that he and the Missus retain joint ownership of a significant spread in Old Westbury, NY, a hoity-toity community home to some of Long Island's most lavish estates and blue-blooded families not to mention mob daughter Victoria Gotti and her trio of hell-cat sons.
Property records show that in March of 1988 the Peter Madoffs forked over $2,000,000 for a 2.012 acre estate that backs up on two sides to the Glen Oaks Club. The Suffolk County Tax Man's records show a 14-room multi-winged mansion built in 1935 that measures 7,992 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers. About 1.5 years later, in November of 1990, the Peter Madoff's laid out another $2,500,000 for an adjacent 2.014 acre parcel. As best as we can tell, no mortgage was taken on the property at the time it was purchased. Public tax records show the Mister and Missus Peter Madoff 2010 tax bill came to a combined $64,845 and two damn cents.

listing photos (top): Sotheby's International Realty
aerial photo (bottom): Bing