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.”

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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 . . .

David and his wife (Courtesy New York Magazine)

– Rough patch for captain of industry George David, whose UTC owns Palm Beach County’s second largest employer, Pratt & Whitney. The 67-year-old is going through a nasty divorce in Connecticut. The wife, Marie Douglas-David, wants $100 million to go away. And the dirty laundry aired out in court Tuesday, according to the Hartford Courant, included how David spent one weekend on the French Riviera with his mistress, a New York financial advisor, and the next in Paris with his wife. David averted disaster in Paris when, walking with his “ole’ lady”, he saw another couple who’d met him and his mistress on the Riviera. David made sure to steer is wife out-of-sight. The wife’s attorneys accuse David of going on a shopping spree with the mistress at the time he was trying to patch things up with the wife. The spree included $10,000 worth of Manolo Blahnik shoes and a $15,000-fur coat. Meanwhile, 11,600 of UTC’s employees could be shown the door this year.

— Palm Beach Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff has just arrived at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area. Madoff, 71, is scheduled to remain at the low to medium security facility until 2139, according to Bureau of Prisons records. The complex also includes a hospital.

McCarty

– Speaking of federal prison, the supporters of disgraced former Palm Beach County Commish Mary McCarty received this e-mail from her family after she checked into her new digs for the next five years, the Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a women’s camp in Texas. Corruption was her crime. Three and a half years the sentence. The e-mail: “Mary landed in Bryan Texas over the weekend.  Any cards or letters should be sent to the following address: Mary Ballard McCarty, Register #: 73341-004, FPC Bryan, PO Box 2149, Bryan, TX 77805. Should you have any questions regarding visitation, commissary funds, sending magazines/books, please don’t hesitate to contact us.”

Commissary funds? Or sure, let me send her five bucks right now!

Eleanor Squillari (Courtesy Vanity Fair)

Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff spent some of the billions he stole from clients in South Florida and elsewhere on sexy massages and escorts, according to a story in the upcoming Vanity Fair.

Eleanor Squillari, 59, Madoff’s secretary for more than 20 years, co-authored a story in the June issue in which she reveals the sleazier side of the part-time Palm Beacher.

Among other revelations: Madoff’s wife, Ruth, tried to exude perfection for her man and watched him like a hawk when beautiful women were around; he kept an address book with the names of a dozen massage parlors; Squillari caught him perusing the escort ads in a magazine; Madoff often tried to pat Squillari’s butt; and he’d make a beeline to her desk after going to the bathroom and telling her, still zipping up his pants, “You know it excites you!” 

For more, click here.

. . . Here comes the spotlight on Palm Beach County again. The Bernie Madoff saga’s getting old, so two writers with Vanity Fair are in Wellington to look into the recent deaths of 21 polo horses before a U.S. Open match. TV equestrian sports commentator Mason Phelps is their guide. ESPN’s muckrakers, meanwhile, have already come and gone. The sports network’s newsmag E:60 explores the tragedy Tuesday at 7 p.m. with eyewitness accounts from the likes of star player Nacho Figueras . . .

. . . Don’t underestimate the magnetism of former American Idol winner David Cook. I’m told by a Sunfest official that when the $900-gold passes (backstage access, among other perks) for Saturday, the day of Cook’s show, were sold out, folks started buying five-day gold passes at $2,300-a-pop just to make sure they wouldn’t miss seeing rocker Cook close and personal . . .

Designers Richie Rich with friend Baby Chic at Sunday's party at Al Malnik's place

With the great unwashed frolicking on the beach below, title loan king Al Malnik had nearly 200 swells at his palatial Ocean Ridge digs for a Sunday afternoon party to benefit his pet charity, the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Malnik and his wife Nancy welcomed the likes of: middleweight boxing world champ Bernard Hopkins; designers Richie Rich and Baby Chic (don’t ask); Bernie Madoff victim Jerome Fisher (who’s rumored to have “lost” $150 million); liquor mogul Harvey Chaplin; Mel Harris, former CEO of AIG, and his wife Fran; and others.

The party was poolside at Malnik’s 38,000-square-foot beachfronter, and not too many will blame him for not leaving folks outside. His place, appraised by the property appraiser’s office at a deceivingly low $19.8 million, is probably worth twice as much if you factor in what’s inside.

Malnik’s basement, for example, contains an Asian art collection that includes sculpted mammoth tusks and one Chinese ivory sculpture that features 8,000 different characters, all with a different face.

Next year, Malnik plans to move his rarely seen collection in the 18,000-square-foot  manse he’s building next door — “Something with a nice rec room for the kids,” he says.

For pictures of the party by Michele Sandberg, click (Read more…)

The Bernie Madoff swindle has driven a wedge between some the elderly residents of the Devonshire at PGA National retirement resort.

The fancy compound, on the grounds of PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, was home until he died March 12 to Jerry Horowitz.

Jerry Horowitz

And Horowitz, 80, was in a tough spot: He made news as founder of the tiny CPA firm that consistently gave Madoff’s business a clean bill of financial health, Friehling & Horowitz. Indirectly, that partly enabled Madoff to run his $65 billion-Ponzi scheme for decades.

But when rumors started at Devonshire that Horowitz and his wife were quickly running out of money because they, too, invested with Madoff, some residents planned to show the kind of mercy that Madoff never granted his clients.

They discussed helping Horowitz by paying for the $5,500-a-month fee for his condo so that he and his wife wouldn’t have to leave, a source familiar with the inner workings of Devonshire told Page2Live.

When Horowitz died, the resident council, an advisory board, was about to ask fellow retirees and management to chip in.

Not sure how they would’ve fared, however. Another group was adamantly opposed, causing friction in the usually relaxed compound.

Horowitz died of cancer on the day Madoff pleaded guilty to defrauding investors. And just Wednesday, Horowitz’ son-in-law and CPA partner, David Friehling, was arrested by the FBI in connection with the scheme. The New York Post earlier this week reported that G-men interviewed Horowitz days before he died but never charged him.

(Read more…)