NEW YORK —The New York Mets’ owners scored an early-season victory Monday, stabilizing the club’s financial future in a deal with a trustee for Bernard Madoff’s fraud victims that requires them to pay millions less than they might have — and lifts a dark cloud from a team whose dismal play seemed to mirror its misfortune in the owner’s box.
The deal means Mets chief executive Fred Wilpon and president Saul Katz, co-majority owners, likely will pay much less than the agreed-upon $162 million, if any at all; guarantees they will owe nothing until the end of four years; and averts a high-profile civil trial. In a lawsuit that demanded $1 billion from the Mets owners, trustee Irving Picard said Wilpon and Katz had meetings with Madoff in his office at least once a year, a privilege few investors enjoyed, and Katz at times spoke with Madoff at least once a day.
Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence after revealing in December 2008 that he cheated thousands of investors of roughly $20 billion for years.
