Thaindian News

By Meena Kar
Dec 11, (THAINDIAN NEWS) Sonja Kohn was outed yesterday after being slapped with a $19.6 billion lawsuit by a New York lawyer. Considered to be the criminal soul mate of Bernie Madoff, Sonja Kohn was known to have fed billions of dollars into the Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff while working for Medici Bank. The founder of the bank was among the many accomplices of Bernie Madoff named in the investigation on Bernie Madoff’s assets that he made from his victims.

The suit says that over 20 years Sonja Kohn exploited the privileged relationship which she had with Bernie Madoff and fed billions through her bank and other schemes into his business. Irving Picard, a New York Lawyer who has set out to recover the billions that have been swindled from the investors, has now claimed the biggest suit with the latest charges. If Irving Picard wins the suit, the damages under the federal racketeering law triple and come to $58.8 billion. In spite of his best efforts to recover all the money that Bernie Madoff had swindled, Irving Picard has not won the appreciations of many of Bernie Madoff’s victims. Some companies felt that they were targeted as accomplices of Bernie Madoff in spite of being victims of the Ponzi schemer.

Sonja Kohn is an orthodox Jew who stands out for trademark red wig. She met Bernie Madoff in 1985 and presently lives in Vienna. Irving Picard has so far recovered $2.6 billion of the estimated $65 billion swindled by Bernie Madoff with his Ponzi scheme. He has also settled his claims against Hadassah, a Jewish women’s organization which has agreed to pay $45 million for the compensation of the victims of Bernie Madoff.