Madoff beach house sale completed for $9.41 mln

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Madoff beach house sale completed for $9.41 mln

19 October 2009 @ 08:49 am EDT

NEW YORK - Epic swindler Bernard Madoff's former beach home off the eastern-most point of New York's Long Island sold for $9.41 million, money that will go toward a fund for defrauded investors, the U.S. Marshals Service said on Friday.

The sale of the house was announced a month ago but not the purchase price or the buyers. A statement by the U.S. Marshals Service, which administers the Department of Justice's criminal forfeiture program, did not identify the buyer.

"Today's sale marks another step forward for the government," Joseph Guccione, U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of New York said in statement.

The imprisoned swindler's Montauk, New York home, on a beach with sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean, was listed at $8.75 million on Sept. 1 by the Corcoran Group. [nN17227646]

Several buyers had submitted bids for the four-bedroom, three-bath, 3,000-square-foot home, which was on the market for more than two weeks.

Sale proceeds will go toward reimbursing victims of Madoff's decades-long worldwide Ponzi scheme of as much as $65 billion, one in which early investors were paid with the money of new clients. Madoff, arrested last December when his fraud collapsed as redemptions rose in the declining economy, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in March.

The remaining Madoff properties in New York and Palm Beach, Florida, were listed for $9.9 million and $.8.49 million respectively, the statement said.

The case is USA v Madoff, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 09-213. (Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Richard Chang)