Today's Stories

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

March 9 , 2009

Investigation Shines a Harsh Light on the Conduct of Madoff's Lawyer in a Prior Ponzi Scheme Case

Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

By PAM MARTENS

Growing questions are being asked by legal scholars and Wall Street veterans over the background role that Bernard Madoff’s attorney, Ira Lee Sorkin, played in 1992 that may have resulted in Madoff looting investors for an additional 16 years.  That question now takes on heightened urgency as Sorkin negotiates a plea deal for Madoff that would avoid the antiseptic sunshine of an open courtroom trial.

The 1992 episode was troubling enough but a search of court records shows Sorkin and his former law firm of 20 years, Squadron Ellenoff, were targets of more serious  charges in one of the largest Ponzi schemes of the 1990s, Towers Financial Corporation, run by Ponzi mastermind Steven Hoffenberg.

Steven Hoffenberg’s heist involved $462.5 million, which in 1994 the SEC called “one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.”  Like Madoff, Hoffenberg paid off earlier investors with the proceeds from later ones while creating a lavish lifestyle and subterfuge that eerily parallels Madoff: an estate on Long Island, a Manhattan apartment, a corporate jet, a yacht, a tiny accounting firm, and lawyer Ira Sorkin.  Hoffenberg also displayed an amazing calm under fire: while under intense scrutiny by the SEC, Hoffenberg tried to buy the New York Post.  At the height of his fraud, Madoff served as Chairman of the NASDAQ stock market’s Board of Directors and served over a number of years on 10 committees of the brokerage industry’s primary regulator, the National Association of Security Dealers (NASD).

Hoffenberg was arrested by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York on February 17, 1994 on charges of securities fraud and obstruction of justice.  He later pleaded guilty to five counts including securities fraud, conspiring to obstruct justice, two counts of mail fraud, and one count of tax evasion.  He was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison.

But in 1988, six years before Hoffenberg was finally arrested and hundreds of millions of dollars more would be stolen, the SEC appears to have been close to uncovering the Ponzi scheme.  But into the fray stepped Ira Sorkin and his law firm, Squadron Ellenoff, to work out a deal with the SEC.

The Administrative Trustee for Towers Financial would later file a malpractice lawsuit against Squadron Ellenoff, charging in court papers that Squadron Ellenoff, through the course of their legal representation of Towers Financial, received access to a confidential memorandum that revealed the fraudulent accounting practices but, nonetheless, the law firm falsely responded to SEC inquiries and subpoenas.  The trustee alleged that “Squadron Ellenoff’s ability to delay the inevitable discovery of the Ponzi scheme, while simultaneously neglecting to advise Towers of the manifestations thereof, served to increase the number of defrauded investors and Towers’ ultimate liability.” 

A class action lawsuit was also filed naming Squadron Ellenoff by defrauded investors of Towers Financial.  The plaintiffs alleged that Squadron Ellenoff prolonged the Towers fraud in two ways: by making material misstatements and omissions to the SEC during its representation of Towers, and second, by creating the agreement whereby earlier investors had the choice of receiving back their original investment plus simple interest or holding onto their 18 per cent  notes until maturity.  According to plaintiffs, this agreement crafted by Squadron Ellenoff did not reveal the fraudulent nature of the underlying investments, despite Squadron Ellenoff’s alleged awareness of the fraud.  Plaintiffs claimed that had it revealed what it knew, more of these earlier investors would have reclaimed their funds, thereby putting an end to the Towers’ Ponzi scheme. 

The Second Circuit Appellate Court relieved Squadron Ellenoff of legal liability on the basis that they had not had a direct role in the issuance of the notes purchased by the plaintiffs or communicated a misstatement to investors about the notes.  Charges against the firm of aiding and abetting and conspiracy were considered barred under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Central Bank, N.A. v. First Interstate Bank, NA which had come down four years earlier. (114 S. Ct. 1439, 1994). 

Some observers believe that this decision may have emboldened Sorkin when he represented two accountants involved in the Madoff matter in 1992 before the SEC.  The accountants were selling unregistered notes, promising returns of 13 to 20 per cent and funneling the money to Madoff.  Similar to the earlier investigation in the Towers Financial matter, this case had the potential to stop Bernard Madoff 16 years earlier and spare subsequent investors from billions of dollars in stolen assets.

The accountants, Frank Avellino and Michael Bienes, went back to the 1960s with Madoff.  They worked for Saul Alpern, Madoff’s father-in-law, who had an accounting practice.  When Bernard Madoff started his own firm on Wall Street in the early 1960s, they began raising money for him to manage.   Eventually, their firm became known as Avellino & Bienes.

In 1992, the SEC filed a suit against Avellino & Bienes charging them with selling $440 million of unregistered securities to 3200 investors. Although the SEC knew the money had gone to Madoff, their complaint referred only to an unnamed broker.  The SEC said at the time they felt they were looking at a Ponzi scheme.

Then in steps Ira Sorkin, still at Squadron Ellenoff, and in the precise move made in the Towers Financial matter, offers to return all the money.  Except the money wasn’t all returned.  Behind the scenes, clients were simply allowed to sign agreements directly with Madoff and continue receiving those steady, stellar returns of 13 to 20 per cent according to lawyers representing defrauded clients.  The SEC was somehow persuaded to drop the case in exchange for an agreement that Avellino & Bienes would shut down their firm and pay a fine.
But Avellino did not get out of the business of funneling money to Madoff, according to two lawsuits filed in Nantucket Superior Court, where three of his victims live.  He simply solicited the money under a fictitious entity called Kenn Jordan Associates, promising returns of 10 to 15 percent. 

On the list released by the court of past clients who held accounts with Madoff appears the following names: Ira Sorkin, Nathan Sorkin (Ira’s deceased father), Rosalie Sorkin (Ira’s deceased mother), Howard Squadron (Ira’s deceased former law partner), Anne Squadron (wife of Howard Squadron), the Squadron law firm’s retirement plan, three of its clients. How much money was withdrawn from these accounts over the years and what annual percentage rate they earned has not been disclosed to the public.  What is known is that 90 days before Towers Financial filed bankruptcy, the sum of $662,000 was paid to the law firm of Squadron Ellenoff according to the Administrative Trustee.
Sorkin now works for Dickstein Shapiro LLP.  Squadron Ellenoff merged with Hogan & Hartson LLP in 2002.

The prosecutors in the Madoff matter have asked for a court hearing this week to review the conflicts that Ira Sorkin may have. Perhaps they might want to consider all of the above.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article.  She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire.  She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

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