Mets Reach $162 Million Settlement

The New York Mets owners agreed to pay up to $162 million in a settlement with the trustee for Bernard Madoff's fraud victims. The deal announced Monday includes the possibility that the owners might pay much less than the decided amount.

The settlement was announced by Judge Jed Rakoff just before a civil trial was scheduled to begin in Manhattan in U.S. District Court to determine whether or not the owners would have to pay up to $386 million as a result of earning significantly more than their original investment in Madoff's investment company.

Mets chief executive and co-owner Fred Wilpon and team President Saul Katz together promised to pay $29 million. Katz said that despite the settlement, the Mets are still financially secure.

The terms of the settlement do not require the team to pay immediately, and instead allows them to begin paying in three years.

It also leaves open the opportunity that the owners might not have to pay anything, provided that they can obtain the $162 million of the $178 million that they are asking for in legal claims of their own against the Madoff estate.

David J. Sheehan, the lawyer for trustee Irving Picard, said outside the courthouse that the amount the team owners were capable of paying was considered along with many other factors during negotiations for a deal.

In the formal settlement read aloud by Rakoff, a statement from Picard was included, in which said he had "reviewed the evidence and will no longer pursue the willful blindness claim against the defendants."

The scheduled civil trial was set to display what Picard claimed was a conscious decision by the Mets owners to disregard warning signs that Madoff had been operating a multi-billion-dollar fraud for several decades which had cost thousands of investors about $20 billion.

With the removal of these accusations, Wilpon and Katz reinforced in their statements outside the courthouse that they had always known nothing about Madoff's fraud.

"We are not willfully blind," Wilpon said. "We never was. We acted in good faith."

Katz said, "We are very pleased to have this behind us. We have done everything in good faith. The settlement itself bears that out."

Picard had originally sought for the owners to pay $1 billion, causing the the team to attempt to raise money through new investors over the past year. The club also slashed its payroll since its revenue suffered with declining attendance and product sales as a result of the team's declining performance.

Rakoff previously had ruled that the team's owners needed to pay up to $83.3 million in profits they had received from Madoff, but now that amount will be included in the $162 million they have agreed to pay.

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo acted as mediator in the deal, and said the settlement frees Picard to focus on the other 800 pending lawsuits against those who significantly profited from their investment with Madoff.

Cuomo labeled the deal as "fair and reasonable as it could be," but he also said,"nobody gets everything they want in a settlement. But both sides helped their causes."