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Mets to Pay $162M in Madoff Case

Accused of knowing of Ponzi scheme.

The owners of the New York Mets have agreed to pay $162 million to other Madoff investors who lost their cash when the billionaire financier’s fraud scheme went belly up. They reached an agreement with the trustee for Madoff’s victims Monday morning just as jury selection for a civil trial to determine how much the Mets owners owed was about to begin. (The trustee’s lawyer, Irving Picard, had alleged that the Mets owners knew Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme but invested anyway.) A judge had already ruled that they must pay up to $83 million back, but if they had gone to trial, they might have been forced to pay another $303 million. Mets lawyers were prepared to call pitcher Sandy Koufax to testify for the defense.