Meanwhile many Madoff “clients” are to make “claims” on their money with the US Bankruptcy judge by July 2nd in order to qualify for a piece of whatever can be recovered from the Madoff accounts, as well as up to $500,000 from the Securities Investor Protection Corp, or SIPC, a division of the U.S. Taxpayer.
Meanwhile another Madoff sucker, Mr. Walter Noel and his wife Monica have been freshly skewered in the new Vanity Fair by its crack journalist Vicki Ward.
The piece opens with an interesting moment when on December 11th, Walter Noel went into his office for some meetings and shortly after arriving learned from a bulletin on the Bloomberg wire that Bernard Madoff had confessed to being one gigantic fraud. Mr. Noel’s Fairfield Greenwich Group had a fund or two with about $7 billion “invested” with Mr. Fraud. You can imagine how that went over in the office.
Since that time Mr. Noel -- who in person is every bit the courtly gentleman a Southern boy could grow up to be – has been the object of trash and bash among many in the social set that he and his wife and daughters and sons-in-law were members of. Vicki Ward’s piece does nothing to dispel that dilemma. Or lessen the trash and the bash.
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| Monica and Walter Noel. Photo: PatrickMcMullan.com |
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The Noels have had a sparkling social career for the past thirty years in this neck of the woods – The New York/Palm Beach/Southampton social axis, up to and until December 11th last. They are a remarkably handsome family – five beautiful daughters, all married, with children – who are quite devoted to each other in the way that most families only dream of, and who include each other in their separate social lives.
Mama and Papa have houses in the best places -- Greenwich, Mustique, Palm Beach, Southampton, and a duplex on Park Avenue in New York. Before the bottom fell out (or the roof caved in, take your pick), an invitation to one of their soirees here there or anywhere, was a prized possession. They were frequent patrons on the gala benefit circuit and an addition to any party. The fact that daddy was so rich from his hedge fund business, and that the husbands were getting so rich from daddy’s hedge fund business (one son-in-law, Marco Sodi, was not in the family business) was a big help.
However, according to Vicki Ward and her sources, a lot of people in Southampton were not so happy with the ebullient, effervescent Noels and their “Vegas Casino”-like parties in their $10 million dollar Stanford White-designed cottage on posh (and polluted)(the water, I mean) Lake Agawam, just a stone’s throw from the Southampton Bathing Corporation, the town’s beach club de rigueur that turned down Walter and Monica for membership via the blackball.
Not to mention the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club (also Stanford White) which allegedly also turned down Walter Noel for membership. And all this before last December 11th.
Pushy pushy pushy is more or less the objection, from what I could glean about Walter and Monica Noel. And the problem, if you are to believe the gossip (and I don’t use that word lightly), seems to be Monica. Ironically, what also can be gleaned from Vicki Ward’s piece is that Monica Noel is a super wife, a super mother, a super mother-in-law, a super grandmother, a super chef in the kitchen, super-duper go-getter when it comes to putting together a party, a dinner, a celebration, a business (she had a line of children’s clothes) and now even a super-supporter of her suddenly and ambiguously disgraced super-husband/father of her children, Walter.
It’s like: what’s wrong with this picture. Well, one thing that’s wrong for starters is Madoff. With the news came the plunging asset accounts (presumed at this point). The icky business of getting into the clubs is relatively minor in the scheme of things when you have the mega-means and the close and dynamic and devoted family that the Noels have. The problem with the Bathing Corporation, as put forth in the VF piece had to do with Monica’s girls going to the club in bikinis and thongs, and table hopping. Really. And Monica going to the club for lunch on her son-in-law Philip Toub’s membership a little too often. Then when they went to Palm Beach and were guests at the Bath & Tennis – where a lot of the Southampton folks hang-out in wintertime, she was always “embracing” friends. You know, like have-you-hugged-a-friend-today? This seemed to have irked some people (“don’t touch me!”).
Frankly, from the sound of it, it seems like there were too many Noels-bells around too much of the time. People were overwhelmed by all that Latin-from-Manhattan (Monica’s Brazilian and her daughters and grandchildren – as well as some sons-in-law – are bilingual) in the room, on the terrace, on the courts, by the pool. And probably jealous – a frequent ingredient in the social swirl.
It also seems that financial success – millions and jillions thanks to ole “Save My Penthouse” Bernie kinda filled the Noels with an extra bit of vim and vigor which in those aforementioned rarefied climes usually adds up to arrogance, snobbery, and a kinda faux droit-de-seigneur. This happens all the time. With almost everybody (yes there are lots of exceptions but not as many as you might wish). The new and new-ish money crowd when they’re feeling their oats are about as fulluvit as it gets.
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