Just when you thought the news could not get worse, it turns out that foundations and groups who acted as watch dogs for justice also had their funds managed by Bernie Made-off* with the money:
Robert Crane, president of the New York-based JEHT Foundation, sent an e-mail to all grantees informing them that the foundation “has stopped all grant-making effective immediately.
“Unfortunately the funds of the donors to the JEHT Foundation were managed by Bernard L. Madoff, a financial adviser who was arrested last week for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars,” said Crane in the e-mail, which was posted on the organization’s Web site.
“Given the circumstances, the Foundation is unable to issue any payments on unpaid grants, the unpaid portions of multi-year grants previously made, or give further consideration to any proposals that were in the pipeline,” Crane said.
Established in 2000, the JEHT Foundation provides grants to organizations dedicated to improving criminal, juvenile and international justice and to groups involved in ensuring fair elections. JEHT gave out $24 million in grants last year to dozens of organizations and law school institutions around the country.
Apparently, the Made-off meltdown will cost the ACLU and others up to a third of their operating budgets by having funds for foundations like the JEHT Foundation go into the Ponzi scheme black hole. Lawyers, it turns out, were no more vigilant than warm hearted philanthropists and maybe never heard the depression-era saying:
If it seems too good to be true, it ain’t true.
For more on this story: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/Pub…
*Due credit to Jimmie Tingle for calling Bernard Madoff Bernie Made-off – once he pointed out the name’s “sound alike doppleganger” well – it works, doesn’t it?
There were few enough willing to take on entrenched power, and to fund protections for due process, and against abuses of power. Now there are fewer…and given the willingness of the “stakeholders” in these nonprofits such as their CEOs to pay themselves like barons of industry, and the general drop in donations, making up these funds will be very, very hard.
