Hedge fund expert determined in 2003 Madoff feeder Ezra Merkin's numbers weren't legit, told Wilpon partner Katz of this but he says doesn't recall

2/10/12, "‘Blind’ ambition," NY Post, Mark Decambre

• "Madoff trustee: Mets owners knew, but loved profits"

"Roughly $83 million of that total was withdrawn in the two years prior to Madoff’s December 2008 arrest. To get the rest, Picard has to prove Wilpon and Katz were “willfully blind” to the Madoff scam.

Picard’s laundry list of uses Wilpon and Katz employed for the Madoff cash is an attempt to show why they would need to turn a blind eye....

Picard, in his papers filed in Manhattan federal court, claims longtime hedge-fund expert and former Goldman Sachs exec Noreen Harrington shared her suspicions with Katz that a Madoff feeder fund run by Ezra Merkin didn’t pass the smell test but that they ignored her advice.

At a meeting in 2003 with Manhattan money manager Merkin, who invested all his clients’ cash with Madoff, Harrington determined that “Madoff’s returns did not jibe with legitimate trading activity and were either a fiction or the result of illegal front-running,” court papers allege.

In earlier legal testimony filed by the Met’s defense, Katz has said that he does not recall Harrington expressing worries about Madoff."...

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