Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Madoff Trustee Closes Out the Week with a Bang | When Irv Picard makes a promise, he keeps it. A few days ago, the trustee overseeing the Madoff mess said he planned to file a lawsuit against several other members of the Madoff clan—including Bernie's brother, two sons, and niece—for treating the family firm like a "piggy bank." And today he delivered, filing an action in federal bankruptcy court seeking the return of $199 million.More

More Madoff Suits on the Way | The Madoff show goes on. In an interview that aired on last night's 60 Minutes, court-appointed trustee Irving Picard said he plans to file a civil suit against Bernie sons, Mark and Andy, this week which will seek the return of $198 million. And just so no one in the immediate family feels left out, he'll be suing Bernie's brother Peter and niece Shana, too. [Dealbook]

Bernie Madoff is behind bars, but other members of the family are growing concerned that they may be joining him in the near future. The Post reports today that two members of the disgraced clan, including Shana Madoff, Bernie's shoe-loving niece, have contacted a consultant who helps white-collar criminals learn how to survive in prison.  More

Bernie Madoff has been out of sight since a judge confined him to his East 64th Street apartment a couple of weeks ago, but there's been plenty of news to keep Madoff in the spotlight. Today a House panel is addressing why the SEC failed to detect the fraud earlier (particularly since the agency acknowledges it looked into the firm 8 times over the past 16 years), a handful of Madoff victims have come forward in the last week (including hedge fund guru Michael Steinhardt), and the scandal-plagued law firm Milberg LLP now says it's signed up 100 victims as part of a class action lawsuit. The most amusing new Madoff details, though, come from an interview with Julia Fenwick, who worked as Madoff's office manager in London for eight years and was a close friend of Bernie's niece, Shana Madoff. Fenwick says Madoff was "the most anally retentive person I have ever met"—and she's not kidding. More

Bernie Madoff has been sequestered in his apartment since his bail conditions were modified on Friday, but that's hardly put a damper on the media frenzy. Over the weekend, the Post was kind enough to tally the funds lost by members of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue (or the "Temple of Doom," as the Post describes it), a $2 billion sum that includes a $200 million investment by Ira Rennert, an amount that is about twice what he spent on his house in the Hamptons. The Times offered up an extremely detailed look at Madoff's rise over the years, and revealed that Walter Noel, who runs the Fairfield Greenwich Group, collected more than $500 million in fees from the $7.5 billion he steered into Madoff's hands, a good portion of whuch was rustled up thanks to the efforts of his globetrotting sons-in-law.More

• The SEC admitted last night that it failed to follow up on repeated warnings over the years to investigate Bernie Madoff's firm and says it plans to conduct an internal investigation; it also is looking into the relationship between Eric Swanson, a former lawyer at the agency, and Shana Madoff, a niece of Bernie, who later got married. [WSJ, NYT, ABC]
• A look at Walter M. Noel, the founder of the Fairfax Greenwich Group and the middle-man who handed over $7.5 billion to Madoff's firm. [NYT]
• More on Bernie's lifestyle, including his fondness for manicures, steak dinners at the Palm, and trips aboard his boat named Bull. [Bloomberg]
• Morgan Stanley reported a fourth quarter loss of $2.29 billion. [WSJ, CNN]
• To cut costs, Citigroup has announced that it plans to combine its corporate and investment banking businesses. [DB, Dealbreaker]