Steven MikulanBeverly Hills money manager Stanley Chais has to be looking over his shoulder this morning to Bernard Madoff's prison sentence. Chais is at the Roybal Federal Building facing accusations by TV host Daphne Brogdon and others of acting as a local “feeder” to bogus investments set up by Madoff. A class-action lawsuit filed under Brogdon's name claims that Chais never told her or other people who invested with Chais that his office was merely a sluice to Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scam. Nor, the lawsuit alleges, did Chais seriously monitor the funds entrusted to him.
Daphne Brogdon
Earlier this morning a New York judge brushed aside the advice of Madoff's lawyers, who'd suggested that a 12-year sentence would be sufficient for their client's fraud conviction. Instead, Madoff received the maximum of 150 years in prison.
According to Reuters, Brogdon lost her entire IRA, worth $80,000, after putting it in Chais' hands.
“What a lot of people were saying about Madoff in New York,” Brogdon
told Reuters, “were things that people were saying in L.A. about
Stanley . . . [who] was by no means a charming guy, from what I
understand, but he was supposed to be a good business person.”
Chais is the target of a separate complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.