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Stonebridge Farm owner named in Madoff suit

Posted: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 2:57 PM

by Paul Post

The owner of a prominent Saratoga, New York, area Thoroughbred farm is named in a lawsuit filed by the court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff’s investment group.

Jeffrey Tucker, owner of Stonebridge Farm, is one of 43 defendants recently added to a May 2009 suit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

Irving H. Picard, the court-appointed trustee, is seeking more than $3.6-billion against Tucker and other defendants who he says helped Madoff with his $65-billion Ponzi scheme.

Tucker is a co-founder of Fairfield Greenwich, which allegedly funneled billions to Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. Fairfield Greenwich co-founders Walter Noel and Andres Piedrahita also were added to the suit.

Tucker’s farm, just outside Saratoga Springs in Northumberland, was the first track in New York state to install an artificial surface. For several years, it hosted a number of high-priced posh dinners to raise money for equine rescue groups during the Saratoga racing season.

Shortly after Madoff’s scheme became public, the farm went on the market for $10-million but has not been purchased. Horses continue to board and train at the farm.

“We’ve had interest from clients from as far away as England, California, and Kentucky,” said Shane Newell, of Select Sotheby’s of Saratoga, the real estate company handling the property. “We have not accepted any offers.”

Previously, the farm and five houses were marketed together. On Monday, Sotheby’s decided to drop the farm purchase price to $8-million and offer three houses—located just outside the compound—separately for prices ranging from $210,000 to $349,000.

The main house, with five bedrooms, and a guest house previously used by the farm’s trainer, still are being offered with the farm.

Picard also is trying to recoup hundreds of millions of dollars he claims that Tucker and his co-defendants received from Madoff, the New York Times reported on July 21.

In a 217-page complaint, Picard’s lawyers wrote, “Every dollar the defendants ‘earned,’ and every dollar they kept to unjustly enrich themselves, was stolen money,” the Times reported. “The defendants did not properly, independently, and reasonably perform due diligence into the many red flags strongly indicating Madoff was a fraud. The defendants were not victims. They were enablers. They were facilitators. They deepened the pain of Madoff’s customers and their own investors.”

In a statement, Fairfield Greenwich said Picard’s filing was filled with “false, misleading, and rehashed accusations.”

Paul Post is a New York-based Thoroughbred Times correspondent