Poor fraudster Bernard Madoff; his situation gets worse by the day. First the liquidation of his firm was combined with his personal bankruptcy, and now he has to share his digs with terrorists.
The Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, which Madoff and fellow financial fraudster Marc Dreier have called home since their arrests, also became the home of Tanzanian terror suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Gitmo detainee who was moved Wednesday to New York City to stand trial in federal court for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa back in 1998.
As has been reported by ABC's Jake Tapper, Ghailani is being held at the MCC because it is a maximum security prison in Manhattan. But it's unlikely that Ghailani will be playing ping-pong with Madoff, Dreier or the Somali pirate also being held at MCC since he is being held in isolation.
Separately, efforts to sell Madoff's business and personal property have been combined to speed the process along and get more of the proceeds to those he conned. At a hearing Tuesday in Manhattan, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland consolidated a bankruptcy case involving Madoff's personal assets with a court-appointed trustee's case aimed at liquidating his business.
A lawyer for the trustee, Marc Hirschfield, told the judge that consolidation made sense since Madoff's personal holdings and those of his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, were "hopelessly intertwined."
On the bright side, Madoff may not have to worry about Ghailani for long because the white-collar criminal is scheduled to be sentenced on June 29 and could spend the rest of his life in a prison, just with common criminals instead of terrorists. Ping-pong anyone? - Donna Block
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