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Thursday, April 23, 2009

Madoff's season tickets sell for $38,100 on eBay



NEW YORK (AP) -- Someone got a bargain with Bernard Madoff's Mets season tickets.

The two seats in the Delta Club Gold section behind home plate auctioned for $38,100 Tuesday on eBay, well below the list price for the pair of about $56,000.

The sale by lawyer Irving H. Picard, the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, covers 75 remaining games this season at Citi Field. The seats averaged $375 per game over the full season, ranging from $225-$525 per game, but the average for the remaining games is slightly less because the six games already played have been just above the average under the Mets' variable pricing plan.

Madoff originally purchased two seats in the Delta Club Platinum section in the second row behind home plate, which averaged $495 and ranged from $295-$695. The trustee exchanged those seats for the Delta Club Gold seats, Nos. 5-6 in the eighth row of section 11, just to the home plate side of the Mets' dugout.

The team agreed to refund to the trustee the $19,440 difference between the face values.

Just five bids were made for the season tickets, with the losing bids coming in at $31,000, $33,000, $35,000 and $38,000.

Madoff's tickets for the April 13 opener against San Diego sold for $7,500 to a man who identified himself as 47-year-old Kurt. He took his 16-year-old son as Mike to the game, a 6-5 Mets loss.

Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz were close to Madoff, who pleaded guilty March 12 in federal court to 11 counts, including securities fraud and perjury, stemming from a Ponzi scheme prosecutors said was worth $64.8 billion. The 70-year-old Madoff faces up to 150 years in prison at sentencing June 16.

Wilpon, Katz and many entities of their company, Sterling Equities, and various affiliated foundations are among the swindled creditors.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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