Tuesday With Bernie: Plaintiffs’ Lawyer Talks to Madoff in Prison

[WSJ Law Blog]

Dozens of people have begged and pleaded with lawyers from Dickstein Shapiro for an interview with their infamous client, Bernard Madoff (pictured).

The first person to get in? A San Francisco plaintiffs’ lawyer named Joseph Cotchett and his colleague, Nancy Fineman.

Cotchett, who is suing Madoff family members and associates on behalf of two victims of the massive fraud, told the Law Blog he interviewed Madoff on Tuesday for more than four hours at the visitors’ center of Madoff’s medium-security prison in Butner, N.C., where he has been since July 14. Madoff, dressed in khaki-colored prison garb, “answered every single question and shed a lot of extraordinary details on exactly how he was able to get away with the scam,” Cotchett said. The two shook hands and Cotchett called Madoff “an absolute gentleman.”

Madoff told Cotchett that he’s “fortunate to be in Butner.” (Details on the facility are at the bottom of this story.) He said he’s trying to stay physically fit by walking on the prison’s outdoor track in the evenings because it was so hot during the day, and that he’s reading a lot. In addition, “he was clearly remorseful . . . . He verbally expressed it on several occasions and you could tell by his demeanor. He said he was very sorry that this didn’t come to end right away, the fraud.”

But Madoff, who was flanked by one of his lawyers, Mauro Wolfe, did tell Cotchett that his scheme was “pretty open and straightforward, and he hid everything but hid it in an inept way,” he says. Madoff told him, in essence, that “you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on. What happened here was when you’re getting the kinds of returns [Madoff reported to clients], you might have a tendency to look the other way rather than asking questions.” Cotchett added that “it’s clear from the details that he gave us that there were many people here who were negligent and not doing due diligence.”

Cotchett says he will amend the two complaints (here and here) he’s filed in New York state court based on new information provided by Madoff, which he won’t discuss until the filing occurs.

Cotchett had to catch a plane back to California before the Law Blog was through with him, but he told ABC News that Madoff said there “were several times that I met with the SEC and thought ‘they got me.’”

“He obviously wanted to speak with us because in his opinion, certain members of his family knew nothing about it, had no involvement of it,” Cotchett told ABC. “He cares about Ruth.”

Madoff’s lawyer, Wolfe, told the Law Blog that the interview was another way his client was trying to help victims recover from the fraud. He declined to say whether he would grant further interviews or which lawyers had put in requests for an interview. Needless to say, the Law Blog made its first interview request on Dec. 11, 2008.