The auction of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff’s kitchen wares and old boots netted such abnormally high returns, an auction house may now be claiming Madoff provenance in order to jack up the price of their wares. A sale by New Jersey–based auction house Northeast Galleries of a cache of paintings and jewelry supposedly belonging to Bernie and Ruth Madoff was called off this week after Philip Eliasoph, a professor of art history at Fairfield University in Connecticut, questioned the authenticity of the items. “The whole pretense is, it’s coming out of Uncle Bernie’s Montauk mansion,” Eliasoph told the Connecticut Post. But if you believe that, he said, you’re as big a fool as Bernie’s investors.
“People are so stupid,” he said. “This one in particular is egregious because they’re playing on the whole pretense of the Madoff fraud. It’s a fraud encrypted in a fraud.”
Northeast Galleries, which is helpfully listed on a website called Scam.com, did not return Daily Intel’s calls for comment.
Madoff auction items may be as phony as his fund [Connecticut Post via Dealbreaker]
Earlier: The Madoff Auction: Everything But Bernie’s Underwear
