Madoff

Someone incarcerated with Palm Beach’s favorite financial adviser, Bernie Madoff, did what hundreds of investors wish they could do.

Madoff, who’s serving 150 years in a federal prison for running a $20 billion-Ponzi scheme, is believed to have received a good whuppin’ at the hands of a beefy fellow inmate.

The assailant was serving time for a drug conviction, today’s Wall Street Journal reports.

Madoff suffered a broken nose, fractured ribs and a cut to his face in the incident, a week before Christmas. He was briefly moved to a nearby medical center on the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.

Why the rough treatment for the former toast of the Palm Beach Country Club? Believe it or not, the WSJ’s sources claim Madoff, owed the big man some cash!

Another interesting Madoff tidbit: Current and former inmates claim the financial sins of the 71-year-old Madoff are considered to be serious street creds, and inmates usually show him respect.

Officials at the North Carolina prison deny that Madoff was assaulted, but admit he was treated at the medical center — for high blood pressure.

– Click here to find out where Madoff would live, had he not been caught

Picower

Billionaire Jeffry Picower, who died of a heart attack in the pool of his $28 million Palm Beach mansion Sunday, was laid to rest Tuesday before an intimate gathering at the Mount Ararat Cemetery in Farmingdale, N.Y.

Picower, 67, was under investigation in the Bernie Madoff swindle when he died. Picower is said to have made $7 billion on his investments with Madoff — cash that Madoff victims want to recover.

A spywitness tells me Picower’s body was accompanied to the gravesite by a dozen people, including his wife, Barbara, and an undercover security guard. Funeral arrangements for the 2 p.m. ceremony were kept secret.

Picower’s new address: Section 60, Range C, Lot 15.

Mount Ararat Cemetery (Courtesy www.findagrave.com)

(Courtesy www.findagrave.com)

– More Bernie Madoff jailhouse news. The Palm Beach swindler is now living in a cell with a drug offender, according to new court papers, and the poor thing Madoff has been relegated to the lower bunk. He’s reduced to eating pizza cooked up by a sex offender. A big change from Chez Jean Pierre, non? As for recreation, Madoff is allowed to use the North Carolina federal prison’s running track after dark, but he’s apparently just walking. As for his buds, he’s spending quality time with the aging Colombo crime family boss Carmine Persico and traitor Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of spying on the United States for the Israeli government. The info comes through a new filing in a class-action lawsuit brought by investors and cited in today’s New York Post. Also juicy: The papers tell how Madoff, back in the 1970s, would dispatch an employee to fetch cocaine for him and workers at his firm. The office eventually was given the nickname North Pole, in reference to the mounts of coke used.

– SoFla wrestler Hulk Hogan considered suicide in 2007, when his gilded life of media superstar took a nasty turn. His wife, Linda, had just filed for divorce and his son Nick was looking at jail time for his role in a car crash. “There were times when I thought that a whole bottle of pills would go down easy,” Hulk writes in his soon-to-be-released book, Life Outside the Ring. “Then I noticed the gun in my hand. I was careless with it . . . I kept my finger pressed right to that trigger . . . and if I moved that finger an inch in the right direction . . . I would have blown my brains out.” The tome comes out next week.

Madoff

A talkative inmate at the Butner federal prison complex in North Carolina says $65 billion swindler Bernie Madoff told him he suffers from cancer and is close to punching his ticket.

Re-igniting rumors that the 71-year-old Ponzi schemer was fighting pancreatic cancer after he was arrested by the FBI late last year, the New York Post this morning claims a fellow inmate of Madoff says the ex-Wall Streeter is on “20 pills a day” and “not doing very well.”

“He talks about it all the time,” the unnamed inmate told the paper.

That may sound like good news to some, but don’t dance on the guy’s grave just yet!

One of several authors of recently released Madoff books, Madoff With The Money writer Jerry Oppenheimer, says an unnamed inmate can’t be all that trustworthy.

However, Oppenheimer adds, “cancer devastated the Madoff family.”

“It wouldn’t be a shocker if he were struck with cancer,” Oppenheimer told Page2Live. “He did look gaunt and skinny at his sentencing. His son Andy suffered from lymphoma. His brother, Peter, had stomach cancer. One of his nephews, Roger, died of cancer in his 30s.

“However, I asked several family members who helped me with the book if Bernie ever had cancer, and they all said ‘no!’”

Besides, wouldn’t a weasel like Madoff use his alleged illness to ask for a reduction of sentence on humanitarian grounds? Madoff, whose seized house on North Lake Way in Palm Beach is being put up for sale by authorities, was handed down a 150-year sentence June 29 without addressing his health.

“That’s the point,” Oppenheimer said. “His $7,000-suit (tailored to hide his cellphone) just hung on him at the sentencing. But he didn’t tell the judge anything about dying.”

Said another Madoff author, Too Good To Be True writer Erin Arvedlund: “His camp leaked that cancer story soon after he was arrested. Could it be true? Sure. Why didn’t use it to get sympathy? Because he wanted the focus on him getting a harsh punishment so that his family would be left alone.”

 Loading ...

Oxygen

– He once felt really bad about losing $7 billion of other people’s money to swindler Bernie Madoff. But the feeling probably is a distant memory for Andres Piedrahita. Piedrahita ran the Fairfield Greenwich Group founded by his father-in-law, Palm Beacher Walter Noel. Over the years, FGG became a feeder fund for fellow Palm Beacher Madoff. So, where is Piedrahita these days? Crying in his beer on a distant island? Working hard to recoup some of the losses? Hell, no. Business Insider reports Piedhahita is sailing the deep blue Adriatic Sea on his brand spanking new yacht, Oxygen. So far, he’s visited places like St. Tropez and Venice. Seemingly not too worried that he lost cash from Colombian entrepreneurs, Piedrahita took delivery of the $30 million toy in June, just as Madoff was getting sentenced to 150 years in prison.

Kim

– We didn’t see that one coming. Miami Beach clothing store owner Kim Kardashian and New Orleans Saints star running back Reggie Bush have called it quits. By reality TV standards, they were at it for a long time. Two years. She must be mad, because there’s talk Kardashian is about to sell the fine threads that Bush left behind on eBay. The two cited distance as the contributing factor for this disaster.

– Sightings: Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, host of England’s No. 1 cooking show, Hell’s Kitchen, sampling the chow at the Boca Resort . . . Comedian Joe Rogan, sitting down at a table at, where else, The Improv at West Palm Beach’s CityPlace, with martial arts expert Jason Chambers (who hosted Human Weapon on the History Channel) and Fort Lauderdale artist Larissa Meek . . . Rapper Pitbull’s staying at the Catalina Hotel in Miami Beach . . . Supermodel Niki Taylor, having sushi at Kung Fu Sushi in Miami Beach with a camera crew . . .