Madoff’s Wine Collection Sold by Morrell Wine Auctions

Madoff’s Wine Collection Sold by Morrell Wine Auctions

According to Joseph Guccione, US Marshal for the southern district of New York, the Marshal Service intends to “dispose of each and every asset seized from Madoff”. In their efforts to help the victims of Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme, New York-based Morrell Wine Auctions sold 262 bottles of liquor and wine from the man’s residence in Palm Beach. Many other similar auctions will take place in the future, all meant to recover as much of the lost money as possible.

His wine collection wasn’t an impressive one, and pre-sale estimates were not very optimistic: $15,000 -$21,000. However, bidders felt very generous and shelled out more money that the auctioneers had expected: four minibar bottles of liquor sold for $300 and a mysterious unlabelled crystal decanter with a wax seal, containing an unidentified brown liquid, fetched $950, even though pre-estimates were of only $60-$90.

The most expensive lot was a case of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild from 1996. The twelve bottles sold for $6,800. After selling the last lot in the collection, Morrell Wine Auctions gathered $41,500, considerably more than they had previously expected.

Madoff’s Wine Collection Sold by Morrell Wine Auctions