By:  Benyamin Davidsons

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, an oceanfront mansion in Montauk, formerly owned by the late, disgraced Wall Street financier Bernie Madoff, finally found a buyer.

The 3,000 square foot home, which had been sauntering on and off the market since 2018, has sold for $14 million.  The home was previously listed at a high of $22.5 million, and was most recently asking $16.5 million, being listed by Bespoke Real Estate and Tim Davis of Corcoran. The new buyer was not named.  The seller is Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado Realty Trust, and his wife, producer Daryl Roth.  They had scooped up the house for $9.41 million in 2009, in a forced sale the year when Madoff was sentenced to prison. The sale’s proceeds had gone to the U.S. Marshals Service, as partial restitution for the victims of Madoff’s colossal scam.

As per Mansions Global, the Roths, who have another home in the Hamptons, had tapped designer Thierry Despont to completely renovate the home back in 2011, and had listed it for sale in 2018. They did not immediately reply to a request for comment.  Madoff’s lawyer, Brandon Sample, also didn’t comment.

The home, at 216 Old Montauk Highway, sits on a 1.5 acre lot and boasts about 180 feet of water frontage.  The property features a long gated driveway, a gunite pool and an oversized deck. The home has 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a large great room with a fireplace, an elegant staircase, an eat in kitchen and a second-floor primary suite with terrace.

Madoff had bought the land in the late 1980s for roughly $250,000.  He had built the home, designing it with late architect Gene Futterman. Madoff had pulled off an epic Ponzi scheme, swindling some 40,000 investors out of a whopping $65 billion, making it one of the biggest rip-offs in American history.

Madoff had died in prison in April 2021, just before reaching the age of 83. He had lived the last 11 years of his life in jail, after being sentenced to 150 years in prison.  As per the Post, in January, Netflix released a four-part docuseries entitled “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street”.

In the series, director Joe Berlinger claims that the New York native had been willing to go to jail, only because he knew the crime syndicates would have killed him otherwise. “People feel like one of the reasons he was so willing to immediately acknowledge his guilt, say it was all him, and go to jail wasn’t an act of courage,” Berlinger told The Post. “Instead of trying to obfuscate or find a legal way out or to delay [a verdict], I do think part of that was self-protection to avoid a mob hit.”

Madoff, had at a time served as chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange.  His penny stock brokerage, founded in 1960, grew into Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, becoming the 6th-largest market maker in S&P 500 stocks.  The scheme included distinguished investors including the New York Mets, Kevin Bacon, Larry King, pension funds, hospitals, and colleges.