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Madoff Swindled Muslims, Too!

But with help from a Jew

by
Allison Hoffman
August 27, 2009
(Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)
(Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

Hey, guess what? Bernie Madoff didn’t just target Jews! According to a story in today’s Boston Globe, Madoff swindled Muslims, too—specifically, Sufis, adherents of a mystical form of Islam. The paper reports that Sufi groups, including the North American chapter of Sufi Order International, entrusted millions of dollars to Madoff. But how did these people find Madoff? Aye, there’s the rub: it was through a California lawyer and money manager named Richard Glantz, who practices Sufism but was, in fact, raised as a Jew. More to the point, his father, Edward, a New York accountant, was an associate of Madoff’s; he was in fact disciplined by the SEC in 1993 for raising $88 million in unregistered securities that were sent to Madoff via the accounting firm started by Ruth Madoff’s father, Saul Alpern. So, you know, never mind.

Allison Hoffman is a senior editor at Tablet Magazine. Her Twitter feed is @allisont_dc.