Take it all...

So the Feds are trying to track down where all that filthy money Bernie Madoff stole has disappeared. Of course, the scumbag, has claimed that as much as $70 million in assets is in his wife's name and should be protected from seizure by the Feds. Some of the assets the Feds are looking to reclaim are their $7 million New York penthouse, as well as another $62 million dollars that aren't detailed. We'll let's look at this:

1. She worked as a bookkeeper for Madoff''s "company"
2. I presume she wasn't making enough money to buy the penthouse, or squirrel away and additional $62 million. If she was, certainly even she would have to wonder how her bookkeeping skills would warrant that kind of pay.
3. As the bookkeeper, she would have visibility into what was coming in/going out.
4. If she was kept in the dark about the transactions (shenanigans) her husband was pulling, again, she would visibility into the books and known something was seriously amiss.
5. While New York is not a community property state (it's an Equitable Distribution state), basically assets are split as fairly as possible, depending on a number of set criteria. They have not filed for divorce, so this isn't applicable in this case. If Madoff has "gifted" his wife this amount of money (I can't see any other way for her to acquire this much), then she's the beneficiary of ill-gotten gains and should have no legal claim to these assets. Lawyers be damned, I don't see how she's going to be able to keep any of it.

Look, she's known all along that something is fishy in the Madoff world of big finance.

In the interest of restoring all of the people who'd been fleeced by this scumbag (Bernie) and any others who may have been party to it, ALL assets of those involved should be seized, sold, and used to repay the victims in this case, particularly the elderly who have been left with absolutely nothing. Find those who helped perpetrate this fraud, squeezing them into confessing, get them to rat out all those associated with this scam, and seize ALL their assets. Oh, yeah, I forget. When all that's done, send them to a cell right next to Bernie's. Let's call this "Lifetime at Bernie's"

I find it incredible that we (the American public and the Federal Government) are expected to believe that Madoff pulled off the biggest financial scam in American history, all by himself. With the thousands of clients that he had, he certainly wasn't creating fake statements, dealing with questions, collecting/depositing "services" fees by himself. It is physically impossible for him to have handled all those details for all those years. I heard a former employee state that toward the end, Madoff was largely out of the office for months at a time. Can't be pulling the strings if you're not in the office.