The Bag Lady Returns

Rex Features Madoff victim and Daily Beast blogger Alexandra Penney has discovered an even more repugnant sociopath than Bernie: his loyal wife Ruth, who now wants to keep $69 million, including the penthouse. Outraged Penney asks: Excusez moi?

Here I am trying to save my financial ass by sitting in a small cold kitchen attempting to write a book. Up until five minutes ago, I felt like a cloistered nun interminably praying at a keyboard for words and sentences to materialize.

Then… OMG! OMG! I just read the newspapers and the need to rant and rave and vent and scream and punch things has possessed me. Mrs. MF (aka motherfucker), sweet innocent little Ruthie, the MF’s life-partner for over 50 years, may possess more colossal cojones and be a more repulsive sociopath than even the MF—although this is difficult to conceive of.

Sweet innocent Ruthie and her children are claiming to be victims as well. This witch has 69 million bucks and each member of her family wants $500,000?  My God. She’s a sociopath just like her life-partner.

Her lawyers have asked that she keep personal assets amounting to $69 million in bonds and cash that are “unrelated to the alleged Madoff fraud.” This amazing sum includes the glamorous penthouse where the revolting MF is still sitting pretty.

Of that amount, $45 million is in municipal bonds on deposit at Cohmad Securities Corp, which is co-owned by her MF husband. I was so close to vomiting on my computer when I read this that I had to calm myself by taking a walk around the block, which gave me more time to think and enraged me even more.

Let me ask some questions that no one seems to have the answers to:

Where did sweet innocent little Mrs. Ruthie MF get her millions? She couldn’t have made the money through her 1996 cookbook, Great Chefs of the World Cook Kosher, because she was slapped with an injunction for trademark infringement.

The publisher of the real (i.e. trademarked) Great Chefs cookbooks has written, “Mrs. Madoff stole the title using our registered trademark 'Great Chefs.' We ultimately got a cease and desist and they agreed not to reprint the bloody book.”

Because the MF stole my savings and I need dough immediately, I am seeking publishers to bid on my newest proposal, Cooking the Books: Greek Cuisine With Alexandra Penney. Actually I’m very worried that sweet innocent Ruthie might steal another trademark, the one I’m applying for with a new TV series that my friend Penelope and I are collaborating on, titled The Bern Unit.

Innocent little Mrs. MF has also stashed $17 million in Wachovia. Why not keep it with her husband? Everyone was aware Bernie was a Wall Street legend and even held the title of chairman of NASDAQ. Wasn’t he good enough for her? The thought comes to me that she might have known that her husband’s dealings weren’t so very kosher for a very long time.

She grabbed $10 million out of Cohmad Securities the day before the MF was arrested. Twenty four hours later, I learned that her husband stole my hard-earned savings, plus money from some 13,000 other souls who invested with the MF. And wasn’t the day little innocent Ruthie withdrew her loot the same exact one when the MF’s son’s wife filed for divorce?

She extracted $5.5 million from Cohmad on November 25. On November 11, two weeks before she nabbed those millions, I tried to get my money out of her husband’s firm, and was repeatedly told someone would get back to me, but in the meantime, not to worry because I was “totally in Treasuries, US-government-backed securities.”

No one ever called me back. I never got my money out—of course because it was all a scam.

How did she withdraw millions and I couldn’t get my savings??? I really want the answer to that one!!! More than that, I want my money back just like innocent Ruthie got hers.

So where did sweet innocent little Ruthie acquire $69 million if it wasn’t through the selling cookbooks or from the MF? I heard that her father was an accountant and her mother a nice housewife: Could they have bequeathed her so much moolah, or were they crooks, too? And let us not forget that Sylvia Madoff, the MF’s dear mom, was a securities broker and left the business when she was cited for not filing reports. Perhaps we should turn the entire family over to a forensic geneticist.

Another news item tells us innocent little Ruthie is running out of her glam penthouse to fax documents, and buying her hubby cigars while he puts up a smokescreen to all the investigations going on. Do they allow you to puff in prison? What is she faxing? And let’s not forget that the glam penthouse is in her name, as is their lavish Palm Beach mansion, which was recently decorated with toilet paper.

And here’s more about the MF’s oh-so-innocent spouse: Cohmad rented office space in the same building as Bernard Madoff Securites—where my money was. Sweet little Ruthie also had a desk on the very same premises. Do the math: Three offices in the same building, and she knew nada? Am I missing something here?

Will someone please tell me what the investigators are investigating? Aren’t we at the very least entitled to some more information on why is this man getting away with the financial murder of thousands of people? Speaking of the more than 13,000 victims, sweet innocent Ruthie and her children and her grandchildren are claiming to be victims as well. This witch has 69 million bucks and each member of her family wants $500,000 from SIPC, the agency that insures against securities fraudsters like her hubby the MF. My God, the outrage is beyond the beyond. She’s a sociopath just like her life-partner.

And while I’m on this rant, I’d like to know who are the prosecutors who forgot to include in their original filings that the MF was a danger to the community. He’s a danger to the entire financial community—and to the rest of us—as he sits at his computer, which I saw him doing on 20/20 a few weeks ago. Who’s to say he’s not moving the money around the globe and stashing away the billions of dollar that we invested with him, while she’s dutifully faxing out buy and sell confirmations to people in countries that most of us never heard of.

Older Madoff victims are penniless and many are facing homelesnesss. Who is going to help them out? When will the victims receive any insurance money that is owed to them from SIPC? A year, three years, a half a decade? How do we pay our bills while we’re waiting?

A 90-year-old has to go to work in a supermarket because he’s lost every cent, my entire life has been turned upside down, and countless other victims are much worse off than I am. But sweet innocent little Ruthie—and Bernie—can still share a great chef’s kosher meal in their gorgeous penthouse on innocent Ruthie's delicious millions. I am gagging as I struggle to find a way to pay what I owe for gas and electric.

One last thought: If Ruthie should happen to die from having to haul around all her heavy loot, wouldn’t the victims’ millions go right back to Bernie in his penthouse?

Please, please, please, can someone answer my questions. Anybody out there thinking RICO?

Alexandra Penney is an artist, best-selling author, former editor in chief of Self magazine, and originator, with Evelyn Lauder, of the pink ribbon for breast-cancer awareness. She had a one-person show at Galerie in Berlin in April and her work was shown at Miami’s Art Basel. She lives in New York, has one treasured son in Los Angeles and more amazing friends than could ever be imagined.